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PLUTARCH 



ON THE 



DELAY OF THE DIYINE JUSTICE. 



TRANSLATED 



AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES. 



BY 
ANDREW P. PEABODY. 






BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1885. 






Copyright, 1885, 
By Andrew P. Peabody 



Slm&trsitjj $«ss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



.SYNOPSIS. 



1. The dialogue opens with comments on the cavils 

against the Divine Providence by a person who is 
supposed to have just departed. 

2. The alleged encouragement to the guilty by the delay 

of punishment, while the sufferers by the guilt of 
others are disheartened by failing to see the wrong- 
doers duly punished. 

3. The guilty themselves, it is said, do not recognize 

punishment when it comes late, but think it mere 
misfortune. 

4. Plutarch answers the objections to the course of Provi- 

dence. In the first place, man must not be too con- 
fident of his ability to pass judgment on things 
divine. There are many things in human legislation 
undoubtedly reasonable, yet with no obvious reason. 
How much more in the administration of the uni- 
verse by the Supreme Being ! 

5. God by the delay of punishment gives man the example 

of forbearance, and rebukes his yielding to the first 
impulses of anger and of a vindictive temper. 

6. God has reference, in the delay of punishment, to the 

possible reformation of the guilty, and to the services 
which, when reformed, they may render to their 
country or their race. Instances cited. 

7. The wicked often have their punishment postponed till 

after they have rendered some important service 



iv Synopsis. 

in which they are essential agents, and sometimes 
that, before their own punishment, they may serve 
as executioners for other guilty persons or com- 
munities. 
§ 8. There is frequently a peculiar timeliness and appro- 
priateness in delayed punishment. 
9. Punishment is delayed only in appearance, but com- 
mences when the guilt is incurred, so that it seems 
slow because it is long. 

10. Instances of punishment in visions, apprehensions, and 

inward wretchedness, while there was no outward 
infliction of penalty. 

11. There is really no need that punishment be inflicted ; 

guilt is in the consciousness of the guilty its own 
adequate punishment. 

12. Objection is made by one of the interlocutors to the 

justice of punishing children or posterity for the 
guilt of fathers or ancestors, and In- heaps up an 
incongruous collection of cases in which la- mingles 
confusedly the action of tin- Divine Providence and 
that of human caprice or malignity. 

13. In answer t>> the objection, Plutarch first adduces 

precisely parallel order of things, with which no one 
finds fault, that by which children or posterity de- 
rive enduring benefit and honor from a parent's or 
ancestor's virtues and servi 

14. There are alike in outward and in human nature 

occult and subtle transmissions of qualities and 
properties, both in time and in space. Those in 
space are so familiar that they excite no wonder; 
those in time, though less liable to attract notice, 
are no more wonderful. 

15. A city has a continuous life, a definite and permanent 

character, and an individual unity, so that its moral 
responsibility may long outlast tin; lives of those 
who first contracted a specific form of guilt. 



Synopsis. v 

§ 1C. The same is to be said of a family or a race ; and, 
moreover, the punishment for inherited guilt may 
often have a curative, or even a preventive efficacy, 
so that children or posterity may refrain from guilt 
because the ancestral penalty falls upon them before 
they become guilty. 

17. The immortality of the soul asserted, on the ground 

that God would not have deemed a race doomed to 
perish after a brief earthly life worth rewarding or 
punish in-'. 

18. Punishments in a future state of being are out of Bight, 

and aii- liable to be disbelieved. Therefore it is 
necessary, in order to deter men from guilt, that 
there should be visible punishments in this life. 
10. Tin- remedial efficacy of the penal consequences of 
parental or ancestral guilt reaffirmed, and illustrated 
by analogii - in the treatment of disease. 

20. Ond often punishes latent and potential vice, visible 

only to ( >mniscience. 

21. If a child has no taint of a Father's vices, he remains 

unpunished. But moral qualities, equally with 
physical traits, often lapse in the first generation, 
and reappear in the second or third, and even later. 

22. The story of Thespesius, who — apparently killed, but 

really in a trance, in consequence of a fall —went 
into the infernal regions, beheld the punishments 
there Inflicted, and came back to the body and its 
life, converted from a profligate into a man of pre- 
eminent virtue and excellence. 



INTRODUCTION. 1 



Plutarch 2 was born, about the middle of the first 
Christian century, at Cheroneia in Boeotia, where 
he spent the greater part of his life, and where he 
probably died. The precise dates of his birth and 
death are unknown ; but he can hardly have been 
born earlier than A. D. 45, and he must have lived 
nearly or quite till A. D. 120, as some of his works 
contain references to events that cannot have taken 
place earlier than the second decade of the second 
century. We know little of him from other sources, 
much from his own writings. There may have been 
many such men in his time ; but antiquity has 
transmitted to us no record like his. He reminds 
one of such men as were to be found half a cen- 
tury ago in many of our American country towns. 
Those potentially like them have now, for the most 
part, emigrated to the large cities, and have become 
very unlike their prototypes. Cheroneia, with its 
great memories, was a small and insignificant town, 

1 A large part of this Introduction is reprinted, by permission 
of the editors, from an article of mine on " Plutarch and his 
Times," in the Andover Review, November, 1884. 

2 U.Aourapxos. 



viii Introduction. 

and Plutarch was a country gentleman, superior, 
as in culture so in serviceableness, to all his fellow 
citizens, holding the foremost place in municipal 
affairs, liberal, generous, chosen to all local offices 
of honor, and especially of trust and responsibility, 
associating on the most pleasant terms with the 
common people, always ready to give them his ad- 
vice and aid, and evidently respected and beloved 
by all. He belonged to an old and distinguished 
family, and seems always to have possessed a com- 
petency for an affluent, though sober, domestic 
establishment and style of living, and for an un- 
stinted hospitality. He was probably the richest 
man in his native city ; for he assigns as a reason 
for not lea vino- it and living at some centre of in- 
tellectual activity, that Cheroneia could not afford 
to lose the property which he would take with him 
in case of his removal. 

He had what corresponds to our university edu- 
cation, at Athens, under the Peripatetic philosopher 
Ammonius. He also visited Alexandria, then a 
renowned seat of learning ; but how long he stayed 
there, or whether he extended his Egyptian travel 
beyond that city, we have no means of knowing. 
There is no proof of his having been in Rome or in 
Italy more than once, and that was when he was 
about forty years of age. He went to Rome on 
public business, probably in behalf of his native 
city, and remained there long enough to become 
acquainted with some eminent men, to make him- 



Introduction. ix 

self known as a scholar and an ethical philosopher, 
and to deliver lectures that attracted no little 
public notice. This visit seems to have been the 
great event of his life, as a winter spent in Boston 
or New York used to be in the life of one of our 
country gentlemen before the time of railways. 

He had a wife, who appears to have been of a 
character kindred to his own ; at least five children, 
of whom two sons, if not more, lived to be them- 
selves substantial citizens and worthy members of 
society ; and two brothers, who seem to have pos- 
sessed his full confidence and warm affection. He 
was singularly happy in his relations to a large 
circle of friends, especially in Athens, for which he 
had the lifelong love that students in our time 
acquire for a university town. He was archon, or 
mayor, of Cheroneia, probably more than once, — 
the office having doubtless been annual and elect- 
ive, — and in this capacity he entered, like a 
veritable country magistrate, into material details 
of the public service, superintending, as he says, 
the measuring of tiles and the delivery of stone and 
mortar for municipal uses. He officiated for many 
years as priest of Apollo at Delphi, and as such 
gave several sumptuous entertainments. Indeed, 
hospitality of this sort appears, so far as we can see, 
to have been the sole or chief duty of his priestly 
office. As an adopted citizen of one of the Athe- 
nian tribes, he was not infrequently a guest at civic 
banquets and semi-civic festivals. 



x Introduction. 

As regards Plutarch's philosophy, it is easier to 
say to which of the great schools he did not belong 
than to determine by what name he would have 
preferred to be called. He probably would have 
termed himself a Platonist, but not, like Cicero, of 
the New Academy, which had incorporated Pyrrho- 
nism with the provisional acceptance of the Pla- 
tonic philosophy. At the same time, he was a 
closer follower and a more literal interpreter of 
Plato than were the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, 
who had not yet become a distinctly recognized 
sect, and who in many respects were the precursors 
of the mysticism of the Eeformation era. Plutarch, 
with Plato, recognized two eternities : that of the 
Divine Being, supremely good and purely spiritual ; 
and that of matter, as, if not intrinsically evil, the 
cause, condition, and seat of all evil, and as at least 
opposing such obstacles to its own best ideal ma- 
nipulation that the Divine Being could not embody 
his pure and perfect goodness, unalloyed by evil, in 
any material form. Herein the Platonists were at 
variance with both the Stoics and the Epicureans. 
The Stoics regarded matter as virtually an emana- 
tion from the Supreme Being, who is not only the 
universal soul and reason, but the creative fire, 
which, transformed into air and water, — part of 
the water becoming earth, — is the source of the 
material universe, which must at the end of a cer- 
tain cosmical cycle be re-absorbed into the divine 
essence, whence will emanate in endless succes- 



Introduction. xi 

sion new universes to replace those that pass away. 
The Epicureans, on the other hand, believed in the 
existence of matter only, and regarded mind and 
soul as the ultimate product of material organiza- 
tion. 

In one respect Plutarch transcends Plato, and, 
so far as I know, all pre-Christian philosophers. 
Plato's theism bears a close kindred to pantheism. 
His God, if I may be permitted the phrase, is only 
semi-detached. He becomes the creator rather by 
blending his essence with eternal matter, than by 
shaping that matter to his will. He is rather in all 
things than above all things, rather the Soul of the 
universe than its sovereign Lord. But in Plutarch's 
writings the Supreme Being is regarded as existing 
independently of material things ; they, as subject 
to his will, not as a part of his essence. 

Plutarch was, like Plato, a realist. He regarded 
the ideas or patterns of material things, that is, 
genera, or kinds of objects, as having an actual 
existence (where or how it is hard to say), as pro- 
jected from the Divine Mind, floating somewhere in 
ethereal spaces between the Deity and the material 
universe, — the models by which all things in the 
universe are made. 

As to Plutarch's theology, he was certainly a 
monotheist. He probably had some vague belief 
in inferior deities {daemons he would have called 
them), as holding a place like that filled by angels 
and by evil spirits in the creed of most Christians ; 



xii Introduction. 

yet it is entirely conceivable that his occasional ref- 
erences to these deities are due merely to the con- 
ventional rhetoric of his age. His priesthood of the 
Delphian Apollo can hardly be said to have been a 
religious office. It was rather a post of dignity and 
honor, which a gentleman of respectable standing, 
courteous manners, and hospitable habits might 
creditably fill, even though he had no faith in 
Apollo. But that Plutarch had a serious, earnest, 
and efficient faith in the one Supreme God, in the 
wise and eternal Providence, and in the Divine 
wisdom, purity, and holiness, we have in his writ- 
ings an absolute certainty. Nor can we find, even 
in Christian literature, the record of a firmer belief 
than his in human immortality, and in a righteous 
retribution beginning in this world and reaching on 

CD O O 

into the world beyond death. 

But Plutarch was, most of all, an ethical philoso- 
pher. Yet here again he cannot be classed as be- 
longing to any school. For Epicureanism he has 
an intense abhorrence, and regards the doctrines 
of that sect as theoretically absurd and practically 
demoralizing. He maintains that the disciples of 
Epicurus, as such, utterly fail in the quest of pleas- 
ure, or what according to their master is still bet- 
ter, painlessness : for . the condition of those who, 
as he says, " swill the mind with the pleasures of 
the body, as hogherds do their swine," cannot en- 
tirely smother the sense of vacuity and need ; nor 
is it possible by any appliances of luxury to cut off 



Introduction. xiii 

even sources of bodily disquietude, which are only 
the more fatal to the happiness of him who seeks 
bodily well-being alone ; while the prospect of an- 
nihilation at death deprives those necessarily un- 
happy in this life of their only solace, and gives 
those who live happily here the discomfort of an- 
ticipating the speedy and entire loss of all that has 
ministered to their enjoyment. 

In Plutarch's moderation, his avoidance of ex- 
treme views, and his just estimate of happiness as 
an end, though not the supreme end, of being, he 
is in harmony with the Peripatetics, among whom 
his Athenian preceptor was the shining light of his 
age ; but his ethical system was much more strict 
and uncompromising than theirs, and I cannot find 
that he quotes them or refers to them as a distinct 
school of philosophy. In matters appertaining to 
physical science he indeed often cites Aristotle, but 
not, I think, in a single instance, as to any question 
in morals. 

As regards the Stoics, Plutarch writes against 
them, but chiefly against dogmas which in his time 
had become nearly obsolete, — namely, that all acts 
not in accordance with the absolute right are equally 
bad ; that all virtuous acts are equally good ; that 
there is no intermediate moral condition between 
that of the wise or perfectly good man and that 
of the utterly vicious; and that outward circum- 
stances neither enhance nor diminish the happiness 
of the truly wise man. These extravagances do 



XIV 



Introduction. 



not appear in the writings of Seneca, nor in Epicte- 
tus as reported by Arrian, and Plutarch in reason- 
ing against them is controverting Zeno rather than 
his later disciples. He is in full sympathy with 
the Stoics as to their elevated moral standard, 
though without the sternness and rigidness which 
had often characterized their professed beliefs and 
their public teaching, yet of which there remained 
few vestiges among his contemporaries. With the 
utmost mildness and gentleness, he manifests every- 
where an inflexibility of principle and a settled 
conviction as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness 
of specific acts which might satisfy the most rigid 
Stoic, and in which he plants himself as firmly on 
the ground of the eternal Eight as if his philosophy 
had been founded on a distinctively Christian basis. 
Indeed, Plutarch is so often decidedly Christian 
in spirit, and in many passages of his writings there 
is such an almost manifest transcript of the thought 
of the Divine Founder of our religion, that it has 
been frequently maintained that he drew from 
Christian sources. This, I must believe, is utterly 
false in the sense in which it is commonly asserted, 
yet in a more recondite sense true. If Plutarch had 
known anything about Christians or the Christian 
Scriptures, he could not have failed to refer to them ; 
for he is constantly making references to contem- 
porary persons and objects, sects and opinions. 
We know of no Christian church at Cheroneia in 
that age, and indeed it is exceedingly improbable 



Introduction. xv 

that there should have been one in so small a town. 
The circulation of thought, and consequently the 
diffusion of a new religion from the great centres 
of population to outlying districts or villages, was 
innnitesimally slow. Our word pagan is an en- 
during witness of this tardiness of transmission. 
It had its birth (in its present sense) after Chris- 
tianity had become the legally established religion 
of the Empire, and had supplanted heathen temples 
and rites in the cities, while in the pagi, or villages, 
the old gods were still in the ascendant. There 
were indeed Christian churches in Athens and in 
Borne ; but they would most probably have eluded 
the curiosity and escaped the knowledge of a tem- 
porary resident, especially as most of their chief 
members were either Jews or slaves. Yet I cannot 
doubt that an infusion of Christianity had some- 
how infiltrated itself into Plutarch's ethical opin- 
ions and sentiments, as into those of Seneca, who 
has been represented as an acquaintance and cor- 
respondent of St. Paul, though it is historically 
almost impossible that the two men ever saw or 
heard of each other. 

In one respect, the metaphor by which we call 
the Author of our religion the Sun of Eighteousness 
has a special aptness. The sun, unlike lesser lumi- 
naries, lights up sheltered groves and grottos that are 
completely dark under the full moon, and sends its 
rays through every chink and cranny of roof or wall. 
In like manner there seems to have been an indi- 



XVI 



Introduction. 



rect and tortuous transmission of Christian thought 
into regions where its source was wholly unknown. 
In the ethical writings of the post-Christian philos- 
ophers, of Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus 
Aurelius, there may be traced a loftiness, precision, 
delicacy, tenderness, breadth of human sympathy, 
and recognition of holiness in the Divine Being as 
the archetype of human purity, transcending all 
that is most admirable in pre-Christian moralists. 
Thus, while I cannot but regard Cicero's " De Of- 
ficiis " as in many respects the world's master- work 
in ethical philosophy, containing fewer unchristian 
sentences than I could number on the fingers of one 
hand, there is nothing in it that reminds me of 
the Gospels ; while these others often shape their 
thoughts in what seem to be evangelic moulds. 

Eow I think that we may account for the large 
diffusion of Christian thought and sentiment among 
persons who knew not Christianity even by name. 
The new religion was very extensively embraced 
among slaves in all parts of the Eoman Empire, 
and slave then meant something very different from 
what it means now. It is an open question whether 
there was not, at least out of Greece, more of learn- 
ing, culture, and refinement in the slave than in the 
free population of the Empire. We must remember 
how many illustrious names in Greek and Eoman 
literature — such names as those of Aesop, Terence, 
Epictetus — belonged to slaves. Tiro, Cicero's slave, 
was not only one of his dearest friends, but fore- 



Introduction. xvii 

most among his literary confidants and advisers. 
Most of the rich men who had any love of litera- 
ture owned their librarians and their copyists, and 
the teachers of the children were generally the 
property of the father. Among Christian slaves 
there were undoubtedly many who felt no call to 
martyrdom, (which can have been incumbent on 
them only when the alternative was apostasy aud 
denial of their faith,) who therefore made no open 
profession of their religion, while in precept, con- 
versation, and life they were imbued with its spirit, 
— a spirit as subtile in its penetrating power as it 
is refining and purifying in its influence. From the 
lips of Christian slaves many children, no doubt, 
received in classic forms moral precepts redolent 
of the aroma breathed from the Sermon on the 
Mount. If the social medium which Plutarch rep- 
resents is a fair specimen of the best rural society 
of the Empire in his time, there must have been a 
ready receptivity for the highest style of ethical 
teaching, — a genial soil for the germination of a 
truly evangelic righteousness of moral conception, 
maxim, and principle. 

Probably no book except the Bible has had more 
readers than Plutarch's Lives. These biographies 
have been translated into every language of the 
civilized world ; they have been among the earliest 
and most fascinating books for children and youth 
of many successive generations; and down to the 
present time, when fiction seems to have almost 

b 



Will 



Introduction. 



superseded history and biography, and to have de- 
stroyed the once universal appetency for them 
among young people, they have exercised to a 
marvellous degree a shaping power over character. 
They are, indeed, underrated by the exact historian, 
because modern research has discovered here and 
there some mistake in the details of events. But 
such mistakes were in that age inevitable. Histor- 
ical criticism was then an unknown science. Docu- 
ments and traditions covering the same ground were 
deemed of equal value when they were in harmony, 
and when they differed an author followed the one 
which best suited his taste, or his purpose for the 
time being. Thus Cicero, in one case, in thp. same 
treatise gives three different versions of the same 
story. Thus, too, there were several stories afloat 
about the fate of Eegulus ; but Eoman writers took 
that which Niebuhr thinks farthest from the truth, 
yet which threw the greatest odium on the hated 
name of Carthage. Now I have no doubt that, 
whenever there were two or more versions of the 
same act or event, Plutarch chose that w 7 hich would 
best point his moral. But it is only in few and un- 
important particulars that he has been proved to 
be inaccurate. 

It has been also objected to Plutarch, that he 
attaches less importance to the achievements of his 
heroes in war and in civic life, than to traits and an- 
ecdotes illustrative of their characters. This seems 
to me a feature which adds not only to the charm 



Introduction. xix 

of these Lives, but even more to their historical 
value. The events of history are at once the out- 
come and the procreant cradle of character, and we 
know nothing of any period or portion of history 
except as we know the men who made it and the 
men whom it made. Biography is the soul; his- 
tory the body, which it tenants and animates, and 
which, when not thus tenanted, is a heap of very 
dry bones. The most thorough knowledge of the 
topography of Julius Caesar's battles in Gaul, the 
minutest description of the campaign that termi- 
nated in Pharsalia, the official journal of the Senate 
during his dictatorship, would tell us very little 
about him and his time. But a vivid sketch of 
his character, with well-chosen characteristic anec- 
dotes, would give us a very distinct and realizing 
conception of the antecedent condition of things 
that made a life like his possible, and of his actual 
influence for good and for evil on his country and 
his age. 

Nor is the value of such a biography affected in 
the least by any doubts that we may entertain as 
to the authenticity of incidents, trivial except as 
illustrative of character, which occupy a large space 
in Plutarch's Lives. Indeed, the least authentic 
may be of the greatest historical value. An anec- 
dote may be literally true, and yet some peculiar 
combination of circumstances may have led him of 
whom it is told to speak or act out of character. 
But a mythical anecdote of a man, coming down 



XX 



Introduction. 



from his own time and people, must needs owe its 
origin and complexion to his known character. 

It is perfectly easy to see throughout these biog- 
raphies the author's didactic aim. It' I may use 
sacred words, here by no means misapplied, his 
prime object was "reproof, correction, and instruc- 
tion in righteousness." He evidently felt and 
mourned the degeneracy of his age, was profoundly 
aware of the worth of teaching by example, and 
was solicitous to bring from the past such elements 
of ethical wisdom as the records of illustrious men 
could be made to render up. True to this purpose, 
he measures the moral character of such transac- 
tions as lie relates by the highest standard of right 
which he knows, and there is not a person or deed 
that fails to bear the stamp, clear-cut, yet seldom 
obtrusive, of his approval or censure. 

The Lives, though the best known of Plutarch's 
writings, are but a small part of them, and hardly 
half of those still extant. His other works are 
generally grouped under the title of "Moralia," 1 or 
Morals, though among them there are many trea- 
tises that belong to the department of history or 
biography, some to that of physics. Most of these 
works are short; a few, of considerable length. 
Some of them may have been lectures; some are 
letters of advice or of consolation ; some are in a 
narrative form ; many are in the form of dialogue, 
which, sanctioned by the prestige of Plato's pre- 

1 Ta r,eiKa. 



I at rod action. xxi 

eminence, was very largely employed by philoso- 
phers of later times, possessing, as it does, the great 
advantage of putting opposite and diverse opinions 
in the mouths of interlocutors, and thus giving to 
the treatise the vivacity and the dramatic interest 
of oral discussion. Some of these dialogues have a 
symposium, or supper party, for their scene, and 
introduce a numerous corps of speakers. In these 
Plutarch himself commonly sustains a prominent 
part, and the members of his family often have 
their share in the conversation, or are the subjects 
of kindly mention. In several instances the occa- 
sion, circumstances, and conversation are described 
so naturally as to make it almost certain that the 
author simply wrote out from memory what was 
actually said. At any rate, these festive dialogues 
present very clearly his idea of what a symposium 
ought to be, and in its entire freedom from excess 
and extravagance of any kind it would bear the 
strictest ordeal with all modern moralists, the ex- 
treme ascetics alone excepted. 

Had not the Lives been written, I am inclined 
to believe that the Moralia alone would have 
given Plutarch as high a place as lie now holds, 
not only in the esteem of scholars, but in the in- 
terest and delight of all readers of good books ; and 
I am sure that there is no loving reader of the 
Lives who will not be thankful to have his atten- 
tion drawn to the Moralia. They exhibit through- 
out the same moral traits which their author shows 



XX11 



Introduction. 



as a biographer. He treats, indeed, incidentally, 
of some subjects which a purer ethical taste in 
the public mind might have excluded. He rec- 
ognizes the existence of immoralities, which, not 
discreditable in the best society of unevangelized 
Greece and Eome, have almost lost their place and 
name in Christendom. Some of his dialogues have 
among the interlocutors those with whom as good 
a man as he would in our time associate only in the 
hope of converting them. But his own opinion and 
feeling on all moral questions are uniformly and 
explicitly in behalf of all that is pure, and true, and 
rio-ht, and reverent. 

Many of these Moralia are on what are com- 
monly, yet wrongly, called the minor morals, that is, 
on the evils that most of all infest and destroy the 
happiness of families and the peace of society, and 
on the opposite virtues, — on such subjects, for in- 
stance, as " Idle Talking," " Curiosity," " Self-Praise," 
and the like. Others are on such grave topics as 
"The Benefits that a Man may derive from his 
Enemies," and " The Best Means of Self-Knowledge." 
There is in all these treatises a large amount of 
blended common sense and keen ethical insight; 
and so little does human nature change with its 
surroundings that the greater part of Plutarch's 
cautions, counsels, and precepts are as closely ap- 
plicable to our own time as if they had been written 
yesterday. 

One of the most remarkable writings in this col- 



Introduction. xxiii 

lection is Plutarch's letter to his wife on the death 
of a daughter two years old, during his absence from 
home. It not only expresses sweetly and lovingly 
the topics of consolation which would most readily 
occur to a Christian father ; it gives us also a charm- 
ing picture of a household united by ties of spirit- 
ual affinity, and living in a purer, higher medium 
than that of affluence and luxury. A few sentences 
may convey something of the tone and spirit of this 
epistle. " Since our little daughter afforded us the 
sweetest and most charming pleasure, so ought we 
to cherish her memory, which will conduce in many 
ways, or rather many fold, more to our joy than our 
grief." " They who were present at the funeral re- 
port this with admiration, that you neither put on 
mourning, nor disfigured yourself or any of your 
maids, neither were there any costly preparations 
nor magnificent pomp; but all things were man- 
aged with silence and moderation, in the presence of 
our relatives alone." " So long as she is gone to a 
place where she feels no pain, why should we grieve 
for her ? " " This is the most troublesome thing in 
old age, that it makes the soul weak in its remem- 
brance of divine things, and too earnest for things 
relating to the body." " But that which is taken 
away in youth, being more soft and tractable, soon 
returns to its native vigor and beauty." " It is good 
to pass the gates of death before too great a love 
of bodily and earthly things be engendered in the 
soul." " It is an impious thing to lament for those 



xxiv Introduction. 

whose souls pass immediately into a better and more 
divine state." " Wherefore let us comply with cus- 
tom in our outward and public behavior, and let our 
interior be more unpolluted, pure and holy." 

]STow, when I remember that in the pre-Christian 
Greek and Eoman world the strongest utterances 
about immortality had been by Socrates, if Plato 
reported him aright, when lie expressed strong hope 
of life beyond death, yet warned his friends not to 
be too confident about a matter so wrapped in un- 
certainty, — and by Cicero, who, when his daughter 
died, confessed that his reasonings had left no convic- 
tion in his own mind, — I cannot doubt that some 
Easter morning rays had pierced the dense Boeotian 
atmosphere, and that the risen Saviour had in that 
lovely Cheroneian household those whom he desig- 
nates as " other sheep, not of this fold." 

There is among the Moralia another letter of 
consolation, to Apollonius on the death of his son, 
longer, more elaborate, and evidently intended as a 
literary composition, to be preserved with the au- 
thor's other works, which breathes the same spirit 
of submission and trust. 

Another of the Moralia, which lias a special in- 
terest as regards the author's own family, is on the 
" Training of Children," — a series of counsels — 
including the careful heed of the parents to their 
own moral condition and habits — to which the ex- 
perience of these intervening centuries lias little to 
add, while it could find nothing to take away. 



Introduction. xxv 

In one sense, the miscellanies brought together 
under the name of" Moralia " bear that title not inap- 
propriately ; for, as I have intimated, Plutarch could 
not but be didactic in whatever he wrote, and the 
ethical feeling, spirit, and purpose are perpetually, 
yet never ostentatiously or inappropriately, coming 
to the surface on all kinds of subjects. But there 
is a great deal in the collection not professedly or 
directly ethical. There are many scraps of history 
and biography, and a very large number and variety 
of characteristic anecdotes, both of well-known per- 
sonages, and of others who are made known to us 
almost as vividly by a single trait, deed, or saying 
as if we had their entire life-record. There is an 
invaluable series of "Apophthegms" 1 of kings and 
great commanders, 2 and another of "Laconic [or 
Spartan] Apophthegms," which are much more than 
their name implies, some of them being condensed 
memoirs. There are, also, several papers that give 
us more definite notions than can be found any- 
where else of the science and natural history of 
the author's time. Withal, we have here so many 
references to manners, customs, and habits, such 
pictures of home with all that could give it the 
sweetness and grace that belong to it, such views 

1 'AirocpOeyfxaTa. 

2 The genuineness of this series has been called in question ; 
but the internal evidence seems decisive in its favor. It is, 
throughout, so entirely in Plutarch's vein, that one is tempted 
to ask, Who else could have written it ? 



xxvi Introduction. 

of society, both in city and in country, in ordinary 
intercourse and on festive occasions, that one can 
learn more of life in that age in the Eoman Empire 
from these volumes than from any other single au- 
thor ; and the writer of a book like Becker's " Gal- 
lus " might find here almost all the materials that 
he would need, except for the delineation of the 
night-side of Eoman extravagance, gluttony, drunk- 
enness, debauchery, and depravity, which came not 
within Plutarch's experience. 

The most remarkable of all Plutarch's writings, 
the most valuable equally in a philosophical and an 
ethical point of view, and the most redolent of what 
we almost involuntarily call Christian sentiment, is 
that "On the Delay of the Divine Justice," or, to 
give a more literal translation of the original title, 
" Concerning those who are punished slowly by 
the Divine [Being]." 1 It treats of what from the 
earliest time has been a mystery to serious minds, 
and has been urged equally by malignant irreligion 
and by honest scepticism against the supremacy of 
the Divine justice in the government of the world ; 
namely, the postponement of the penal consequences 
of guilt, sometimes till there are no witnesses of 
the crime left to behold the punishment, sometimes 
till the offender himself has lost the thread between 
the evil that he did and its retribution, sometimes 
till the sinner has gone to the grave in peace, and 
left innocent posterity to suffer for his sins. Plu- 

1 Ilepi tQ)v vtto tov delov (3pa8ius rifxopovfxevwv. 



Introduction. xxvii 

tarch, with his unquestioning faith in immortality, 
doubts not that guilt, unpunished in this life, will 
be overtaken by just retribution in the life to come, 
But, as he says, retribution, though it may be con- 
summated only in the future life, is not delayed 
till then. It seems late, because it lasts long. 
The sentence is passed upon the guilt when it is 
committed ; and, however its visible execution may 
be postponed, the sinner is from that moment a 
prisoner of the Divine justice, awaiting execution. 
He may give splendid suppers, and live luxu- 
riously ; yet still he is within prison walls from 
which there is no escape. 

This is undoubtedly true, and yet there are many 
cases, and those of the worst kind, in which 'it seems 
to be not true. A moderately bad man, in most 
instances, feels profoundly the shame and misery 
that he has brought upon himself. But a thor- 
oughly wicked man takes contentedly a position 
which we may fitly term sub-human. If we sup- 
pose a man possessed of a magnificent house, luxuri- 
ously and tastefully furnished, who yet chooses 
never to ascend a stair, and lives in the basement 
shabbily and meanly, with the coarsest appliances 
of physical comfort, we might take him as the type 
of not a few bad men who seem entirely at their 
ease. They live in the basement. They have 
thrown away the key to the upper rooms. They 
have lost all appreciation of the higher, better 
modes of human living, and they are contented and 



XXV 111 



Introduction. 



satisfied as a well-fed beast is, in the absence of all 
spiritual cravings and ambitions. But this life, 
poor and mean as it is at the best, becomes still 
more narrow and sordid with the lapse of time. 
Many have looked with envy on prosperous guilt 
early or midway in its career ; none can have wit- 
nessed its lengthened age without pity and loathing. 
Especially is this the case with the several forms 
of sensual vice. As age advances, the power of 
enjoyment wanes, while the morbid craving grows, 
even under the consciousness of added misery with 
its continued indulgence. The body becomes the 
soul's dungeon, and its walls thicken inward and 
close up the wonted entrances of enjoyment. The 
senses, cleadened on the side of pleasure, no longer 
avenues of beauty or of harmony, seem to serve 
only as means of prolonging a death in life, and as 
open inlets of discomfort and pain. 

But the suspense of sentence has in not a few 
cases, according to Plutarch, a directly merciful 
purpose. As the most fertile soil may before 
tillage produce the rankest weeds, so in the soul 
most capable of good there may be, prior to culture, 
a noisome crop of evil, and yet God may spare 
the sinner for the good that is in him, and for 
the signal service which, when reclaimed, he may 
render to mankind. Then, too, by the delay of 
visible judgment God gives men in his own ex- 
ample the lesson of long-suffering, and rebukes 
their promptness in resentment and revenge. Still 



Introduction. xxix 

further, when penalty appears to fall on the pos- 
terity or successors of the guilty, and a race, a 
people, a city, or a family seems punished for the 
iniquity of its progenitors, Plutarch brings out very 
fully and clearly the absolutely essential and ne- 
cessary solidarity of the family or the community, 
which can hardly fail so to inherit of its ancestors 
in disposition and character as to invite upon itself, 
to merit for itself, or at best to need as preventive 
or cure, the penal consequences of ancestral guilt. 

This essay is all the more valuable because not 
written by a Christian. It shows that the intense 
stress laid by Christian teaching on a righteous ret- 
ribution lasting on beyond the death-change is not a 
mere dogma of the sacred records of our religion, 
but equally the postulete of the unsophisticated 
reason and conscience of developed humanity. 

My translation is not literal, in the common mean- 
ing of that term. If it were so, it would be unin- 
telligible ; for Plutarch's style lacks simplicity, and 
his sentences, though seldom obscure, are often in- 
volved and intricate, sometimes elliptical. I have, 
however, given a faithful transcript in English of 
what I understand Plutarch to have written, omit- 
ting no thought or shade of thought that I suppose 
to be his, and inserting none of my own. 

I have used Wyttenbach's edition of the Moralia, 
departing from his text in but a single instance, 



XXX 



Introduction. 



and that, one in which he pronounces the reading 
in the text impossible, and suggests a conjectural 
reading as necessary to the sense of the passage. I 
have also made constant reference to the late Pro- 
fessor Hackett's edition of this treatise, which it is 
superfluous to commend where he was known ; for 
not only was he confessedly among the foremost 
scholars of his time, but his exacting conscientious- 
ness would not suffer him to put less than his best 
and most thorough work into whatever came from 
his hands. 



PLUTARCH 

ON THE DELAY OF THE DIVINE JUSTICE. 



1. Epicurus, 1 having said such things, Cinius 2 
before any one could reply, while we were at the 
farther end of the porch, went hastily away. But 
we, somewhat amazed at the man's rudeness, stood 
still, looking at one another without speaking, and 
then turned and resumed our walk. 

1 A name probably chosen for this retreating collocutor because 
the dialogue is anti-Epicurean in its dogmas and its spirit, and 
the supposed arguments to be refuted were therefore such as an 
Epicurean would have urged. Epicurus denied the Divine Provi- 
dence, and maintained that the gods did not concern themselves 
with human affairs. 

2 Some commentators suppose this to be the second part of a 
dialogue, of which the first part is lost. But it is more probable 
that the reader is, for dramatic effect, introduced into the midst of 
a prepared scene. This was not an uncommon device in the philo- 
sophical dialogues that have come down to us from early time. 
Plato, Cicero, and Lucian furnish instances of it, and two other of 
Plutarch's dialogues begin in a similar way. Cinius is a name 
that occurs nowhere else. A purely conjectural emendation of a 
single letter would give us the better known name, Quintus. The 
scene of this dialogue is the temple of Apollo at Delphi, — the 
temple in which Plutarch officiated as priest. 

1 



2 Plutarch on the 

Then Patrocleas 1 commenced the conversa- 
tion, saying, — What then ? Do you see fit to drop 
the discussion ? or will you answer his argument 
as if he were present, though he has taken himself 
away ? 

Timon 2 then said, — If he threw a javelin 3 at us 
as he weut away, it certainly would not be well for 
us to take no notice of the weapon still sticking 
in our sides. Brasidas, 4 indeed, as we are told, 
drew out the spear from his own body, and killed 
with it the man who had hurled it at him. But it 
is no concern of ours to retaliate on those who 
fling at us misplaced and false reasoning; it is 
enough for them if we reject their arguments be- 
fore they affect our belief. 

Then I said, — Which of the arguments that he 
urged moved you the most ? For the man, as if 

1 Plutarch's son-in-law. 

2 Plutarch's brother. 

3 The figure by which arguments are called spears or javelins, 
and are said to be hurled when uttered — in itself not unnatural 
— occurs frequently in the ancient classics. Indeed, the most au- 
thentic derivation of the Latin dicere, to speak, is from the Greek 
8iKe?v, to hurl. The French word trait offers an analogy in point. 

4 Brasiclas, the most distinguished Spartan general, and the 
leader of the Spartan forces, in the earlier part of the Peloponne- 
sian war, was slain near Amphipolis, at the moment of victory. 
Cleon, the Athenian general, was killed at the same time. The 
incident referred to in the text has no record in history ; but a 
scholiast on Aristophanes says that Cleon and Brasidas killed 
each other, referring probably to the tradition that they both 
were killed by Cleon' s spear. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 3 

inspired both by wrath and by scorn, brought to- 
gether against the Divine Providence many things 
heaped up in confusion, yet no well-ordered reasons, 
but such miscellaneous cavils as could be gathered 
here and there. 

2. Patrocleas then said, — The slowness and 
procrastination of the Deity in the punishment of 
the wicked seem to me the most mysterious of all 
things ; and now, under these arguments, I find my- 
self a new and fresh adherent to the doctrine in 
behalf of which they are urged. Indeed, I used a 
long time ago to be vexed by that saying of Eu- 
ripides : — 

" He lingers ; such the nature of the gods." } 

While in no respect, least of all toward wicked 
men, is it fitting that God should be dilatory ; for 
they are in no wise dilatory or slow in ill-doing, 
but are hurried on to evil by their passions with the 
utmost impetuosity. Indeed, as Thucydides says, 2 
punishment close at hand bars the way to those 
who most hope to gain by guilt. Moreover, no 
debt overdue, equally with the delay of due punish- 
ment, renders the person wronged utterly hopeless 
and depressed, while it confirms the evil-doer in 
boldness and audacity. On the other hand, pun- 

1 A verse from the Orestes, — the reply of Orestes when asked 
whether Apollo would give him no assistance in his troubles. 

2 In a speech of Cleon in favor of the slaughter of the men and 
the enslavement of the women and children of Mytilene, for the 
attempt to release themselves from the sway of the Athenians. 



4 Plutarch on the 

ishments directly inflicted on those who are bold in 
evil are at once preventive of future crimes, and a 
source of great consolation to those who have suf- 
fered wrong. I am therefore troubled by the say- 
ing of Bias, 1 which often recurs to me, when he 
told a man of bad character that he had no fear 
that he would go unpunished, but feared that he 
himself might not live to see him punished. What 
good, indeed, did the punishment of Aristocrates 2 
do to the Messenians who were slain before it came 
upon him ? He betrayed them in the battle of 
Taphrus, yet, not being found out for twenty years, 
he reigned over the Arcadians all that time, till at 
length his treachery was discovered and met with 
its due penalty ; but the victims of his crime had 
ceased to be. Again, what comfort did any of the 
Orchomenians 3 who lost children, friends, and kin- 

1 One of the seven wise men of Greece, as also of the smaller 
number of four to whom alone the possession of pre-eminent 
wisdom was ascribed by some authorities. He is said to have 
been the author of the selfish maxim, that one should love his 
friends as if he were at some future time going to hate them. 

2 Aristocrates, king of Orchomenus in Arcadia, joined the Mes- 
senians in war against Sparta, and was bribed by the Lacedae- 
monians to betray his allies in the battle of Taphrus. Many years 
afterward, his treachery became, known, and he was stoned to 
death by his own subjects. 

3 There is no historical vestige of this transaction, or of the king 
implicated in it. The scene of the story was propably Orchomenus 
in Boeotia, and Plutarch, as a Boeotian, would naturally have been 
familiar with chapters of local history too remote in time or too 
insignificant to have left any permanent record. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 5 

dred by the treachery of Lyciscus derive from the 
disease that many years afterward seized him and 
consumed his body, while he, when he dipped and 
washed his feet in the river, always prayed, with 
oaths and curses, that his limbs might rot if he had 
ever been guilty of treason and injustice ? Indeed, 
not even the children's children of those who were 
then murdered could have witnessed at Athens 
the snatching of the contaminated bodies of the 
murderers from their graves, and their transporta- 
tion beyond the boundaries of the state. 1 Hence, 
Euripides is absurd, when, to dissuade from crime, 
he says : — 

" No haste has Justice ; dread not her approach ; 
She strikes no mortal heart with sudden blow ; 
But noiseless, with slow step, she glides along, 
To smite the guilty when their hour has come." 2 

It seems to me that it is no other considerations 
than these that lead bad men to encourage them- 
selves, and to give themselves free scope for guilty 
enterprise, inasmuch as the fruit of wrong- doing is 
quickly ripe and in full sight, while punishment is 
late, and lingers far behind the enjoyment derived 
from the guilt. 

1 Probably, if not Lyciscus, those implicated with him in his 
crime took refuge in Athens, and many years afterward, at some 
crisis which created superstitious alarm, their bodies were disin- 
terred and transported beyond the limits of the state, — a not 
unusual mode of lustration in the early time. 

2 This is from a lost tragedy. 



6 Plutarch on the 

3. When Patrocleas had thus spoken, Olympi- 
cus, 1 taking np the thread of his discourse, said, — 
It should also be observed, Patrocleas, how exceed- 
ingly great is the mischief resulting from the delay 
and procrastination of the Deity about these mat- 
ters, since the tardiness of retribution takes away 
faith in Providence ; and because chastisement for 
the wicked does not ensue immediately upon the 
performance of an evil deed, but comes upon them 
afterward, they place it to the account of misfor- 
fune, call it ill-luck and not punishment, and so are 
in no wise profited by it, — being grieved indeed 
for what befalls them, but not led to repentance for 
their ill-doing. For as the punishment of the whip 
and the spur immediately on a horse's stumbling or 
shying corrects him and puts him on right behavior, 
while beating and twitching of the reins and shout- 
ing at him at a later period seem to him for some 
other purpose than discipline, and thus annoy him 
without teaching him, so guilt rebuked and checked 
by punishment after each of its wrong-doings and 
transgressions might gradually become conscience- 
stricken, and be brought to the fear of God, as pre- 
siding over the affairs and experiences of men with 
a justice that does not linger ; but justice hesitat- 
ing and slow-paced, as Euripides describes it, and 
falling upon the wicked as if by chance, being vague, 
untimely, and out of due order, seems like a merely 

1 This name occurs as that of an interlocutor in one of the 

Symposiacs. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 7 

fortuitous event rather than ordained by Providence. 
Thus, I do not see what use there is in those mills 
of the gods said to grind so late 1 as to render pun- 
ishment hard to be recognized, and to make wicked- 
ness fearless. 

4. These things having been uttered, and I being 
wrapped in thought, Timon said, — Shall I now put 
the climax to this reasoning on the side of scepti- 
cism, or shall I rather suffer Plutarch 2 to argue 
against what has already been brought forward ? 

Then I said, — What need is there of bringing 
on the third wave, 3 and utterly whelming the sub- 
ject in doubt and difficulty, if one is not able to 
refute what was urged at the outset, and to set 
aside the objections already offered ? First, then, 
taking our start from the home-altar of reverence 
for all that is divine, — the heritage of the philoso- 
phers of the Academy, — we shall piously refrain 
from speaking about these things as if we had cer- 

1 The reference here is, undoubtedly, to an hexameter verse 
from some unknown poet, quoted by Sextus Empiricus in the 
third century : — 

'Ot//e Oewv a\eov<ri /xuAot, aAeoveri 8e XenToi. 
"The mills of the gods grind late, but they grind fine." 

2 Avrbv, evidently meaning Plutarch. 

3 I doubt whether there is reference here to every third wave as 
having a fuller flow. Timon, though inclined at the outset to 
the other side, is represented as so affected by the arguments of 
Patrocleas and Olympicus that he is prepared to make a third 
speech against the Divine Providence, yet is willing to yield place 
to his brother ; and the speech which Plutarch supersedes is the 
third wave. 



8 Plutarch on the 

tain knowledge of them. For it is less presumptuous 
for one unskilled in music to discourse about it, or 
for one not versed in military science to give his 
judgment in matters relating to the conduct of war, 
than for us to pretend to look through the things 
that appertain to God and to superior spirits, mere 
men as we are, like unskilled observers who should 
undertake to pass sentence on the skill of artists by 
their own conjectures and surmises. It is not easy, 
indeed, for a common person to comprehend a phy- 
sician's reasons for using the knife later, and not 
earlier, or for ordering a bath, not yesterday, but to- 
day ; and still less is it easy or safe for a mortal to 
say of God anything except that he, best knowing 
the fit time for the curing of wickedness, applies to 
every evil-doer punishment as the appropriate medi- 
cine, and this not of the same intensity, nor at one 
and the same interval of time, for all. Kow that 
the medical treatment of souls, termed punishment 
and justice, is the greatest of all arts, Pindar, 1 with 
myriads of others, testifies, calling God, the chief 
and lord of all, the supremely good artificer, as 
being the author of justice, to whom it belongs to 
allot to each of the guilty the time, mode, and 
measure of his punishment. Moreover, Plato says 
that Minos, although the son of Zeus, became his 
disciple in this art, so that it is not possible for one 
who has not been a learner in it and acquired skill 
in it, to proceed aright in the administration of 

1 In some poem not now extant. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 9 

justice, or to pass an intelligent judgment on its 
administration by another. Even the laws which 
men make do not always have a justifying reason 
that is simple and generally manifest ; but some of 
their enactments seem very ridiculous. Thus, in 
Lacedaemon, the Ephori when they come into office 
make immediate proclamation that no man shall let 
the beard on the upper lip grow, 1 and that the laws 
must be so obeyed that they shall never be annoy- 
ing to the citizens. Thus too, the Romans strike 
the slaves whom they are going to emancipate with 
a slender twig. 2 They also, when they make their 
wills, appoint certain persons their heirs, and sell 
their property to other persons, 3 which appears ab- 
surd. But the most absurd of all seems that enact- 
ment of Solon, that, in case of an insurrection in the 



1 We have evidence from other sources that the Spartans were 
accustomed to shave the upper lip, and in Sparta custom and law 
were identical. 

2 Slaves might be manumitted in Rome by having their names 
inscribed on the roll of taxable citizens with permission of their 
masters, in which case they must have been possessed of some 
2)cculium, — property of their own earning or given them by their 
masters. They might also be made free by will. But the oldest 
mode of manumission is that here referred to. The slave was 
brought before the magistrate, whose lictor laid a rod or wand on 
his head, after which ceremony the master pronounced him free. 

3 In this, which was one of several modes in which wills were 
made in Rome, the testator made a fictitious sale of his property 
to a friend, who received his instructions as to the disposal of it. 
The person thus made the purchaser filled very much the place 
that with us is held by the executor of a will. 



10 Plutarch on the 

city, he who does not attach himself to either party, 
or act on either side, shall be branded with civic 
infamy. 1 In fine, one who understood not the pur- 
pose of the lawgiver, nor comprehended the reasons 
for the individual statutes, might enumerate many 
instances of foolish legislation. What wonder is it 
then, if, while human affairs are so difficult to be un- 
derstood, it is not easy to say concerning the gods why 
they punish some transgressors later, some earlier ? 

5. These things I say, not as a pretence for get- 
ting rid of the subject, but as an apology for the 
liberty which I crave in discussing it, that my dis- 
course, as if looking to some ultimate harbor or 
refuge, 2 may proceed with the greater assurance to 
resolve the doubt. But first see how, as Plato says, 
God, making himself conspicuous as the example of 
all things good, bestows human virtue, in some sort 
his own likeness, on those who are able to be fol- 
lowers of God. For nature throughout, being first 
in a state of chaos, had the beginning of its change, 
and of its becoming an orderly universe, by means 
of a resemblance to and a participation in the 
Divine idea and the Divine virtue. The same 

1 Solon's theory was, that neutrality in a disturbed condition of 
the state indicated either indifference to the public well-being or 
the most sordid selfishness ; while sedition might be sometimes 
justifiable, and at the worst was not inconsistent with honesty of 
purpose. 

2 The " harbor or refuge" is man's inevitable ignorance of 
Divine things, which is often a sufficient answer for doubts or 
objections which man cannot solve or refute. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 11 

author says that nature kindled sight in us, that 
the soul by seeing and admiring the heavenly bodies, 
accustoming itself to behold and admire what is 

CD 

becoming and orderly, might hate unseemly and 
vagrant passions, and might shun rash and hap- 
hazard conduct, as the source of all wickedness and 
vice. For it has fallen to man's lot to enjoy from 
God no greater gift than the capacity of being 
formed to virtue by the imitation of those things in 
God that are beautiful and good. Thus also to bad 
men he appoints punishment with a lingering and 
leisurely stroke, not because he fears mistake or 
reason for repentance were he to punish more 
promptly, but in order to expel from us the brutish 
and impetuous element that there is in punishment, 
and to teach us not to fall upon those who have 
injured us with anger, nor when 

" Kevenge, outleaping all restraint of reason," x 

blazes and rages, as if we were bent on appeasing 
thirst or hunger, but, imitating his clemency and 
long-suffering, to proceed to chastisement deliber- 
ately and cautiously, choosing, as helping us to take 
the wiser counsel, the time that shall give us the 
least reason for repentance. As Socrates said, it is 
not so bad to drink turbid water to excess as for a 
temper agitated and overwhelmed by anger and 
rage, before it can be settled and clarified, to satiate 
itself in the punishment of a kinsman or a neighbor. 

1 From an unknown poet. 



12 Plutarch on the 

For it is not, as Thucydides says, the retribution 
nearest in time to the injury received, but that 
which lies the farthest from it, that obeys the law 
of fitness. As anger, according to Melanthius, 1 

" By deeds depraved and dire casts reason out," 

so reason performs right and moderate deeds, put- 
ting anger and resentment to flight. Hence it is 
that men are made meek by the examples of other 
men ; as when they hear how Plato, having lifted 
his staff over his servant's head, stood still for a long 
time, punishing his own anger, as he said ; and how 
Archytas, learning of some misconduct and disorder 
of his laborers in the field, conscious that he was 
becoming resentful and bitter in his feeling toward 
them, did nothing except to say, as he left them, 
" It is fortunate for you that I am angry." But if 
the reported sayings and doings of men can tone 
down the harshness and severity of anger, how 
much more fitting is it that we — seeing that God, 
to whom there is no need of delay nor possibility of 
repentance, yet puts off punishment into the future, 
and awaits its fitting time — should ourselves be 
circumspect in these matters, and should regard as a 
Divine part of virtue the clemency and long-suffer- 
ing w r hich God manifests, reforming few indeed by 
punishment, but by the slowness of punishment 
benefiting and admonishing many ! 2 

1 A tragedian, of whom only a few fragments are preserved. 

2 This whole section looks almost like a paraphrase of St. Paul's 
exhortation : "Be ye kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 13 

6. Let us next consider, in the second place, that 
punishments inflicted by men have no purpose 
but retaliation, terminating in the suffering of the 
wrong-doer, and going no farther. They thus fol- 
low hard upon the offences, as a dog barking at the 
offender's heels, and pursue evil deeds close in their 
rear. But God probably sees through the disposi- 
tions of the diseased souls to which he draws nigh 
in judgment, knows whether they show an inclina- 
tion to repentance, and grants time for reformation 
to those whose guilt has not been excessive or irre- 
claimable. For, aware what endowment of virtue 
souls bring from him when they come into the 
world, and how strong and imperishable in them is 
this native nobleness, which, though — corrupted by 
bad association and nurture — it may blossom into 
evil contrary to nature, yet when cured restores 
some men entirely to proper habits of life, he 
therefore does not punish all alike ; but the incura- 
ble he speedily takes out of being, and cuts them 
off, inasmuch as it is not only harmful to others, 
but, most of all, injurious to the sinner's own self, 
to be always conversant with wickedness. On the 
other hand, to those whose sins probably proceeded 
rather from ignorance of the good than from prefer- 
ence for what is vile, he gives time for a change of 
character ; but if they continue as they are, he ex- 
ecutes justice on them too, and there is no danger 

even as God [for Christ's sake] hath forgiven you. Be ye there- 
fore followers of God, as dear children ; and walk in love." 



14 Plutarch on the 

of their escaping. !STow see what changes have 
taken place in the habits and lives of men. There- 
fore the changeable part of the life or character is 
designated by a word denoting turn, 1 and also by a 
word denoting habit} because habit constitutes a 
large part of the character, and, when adopted, has 
commanding influence. I am inclined to think, 
indeed, that the ancients ascribed to Cecrops 3 a 
double nature, not, as some say, because from a 
good king he became a fierce and dragon-like ty- 
rant, but, on the other hand, because, having been 
in the beginning perverse and an object of terror, 
he afterward ruled with meekness and kindness. 
But if this is an open question, we know con- 
cerning G-elon 4 and Hieron 5 of Sicily, and Peisis- 

1 TpSiros, from rpzireiv, to turn. Our phrase turn of mind vir- 
tually denotes a change, i. e. a direction of mind not native or 
normal. 

2 r H9os, habit. Habits are not native, but always imply a 
change from a previous state in which they had not begun to be. 

3 A man in the upper part of his body ; in the lower, a dragon. 

4 Gelon first obtained the sovereignty of Gela in Sicily, by 
setting aside the minor sons of the late king, of whom he had been 
appointed guardian. He subsequently availed himself of dissen- 
sions in Syracuse, to obtain the sovereignty of that city, which 
rose to great prosperity and wealth under his reign. 

5 Hieron was the brother and successor of Gelon, who left an 
infant son. Some accounts say that he assumed the sovereignty 
in his nephew's name, and retained it as in his own right. He 
was tyrannical in his rule, but was successful in war, and was 
distinguished for his patronage of literature and of learned men. 
Aeschylus and Pindar were among his invited and permanent 
guests. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 15 

tratus, 1 the son of Hippocrates, that, getting posses- 
sion of absolute power by foul means, they used it to 
good purpose. Gaining the ascendency unlawfully, 
they governed with moderation and for the public 
welfare. Indeed, they made excellent laws, gave 
great encouragement to agriculture, and converted 
their subjects from scoffers and babblers into sober 
citizens and industrious men. Gelon also, being an 
excellent military commander and conquering the 
Carthaginians in a great battle, refused to conclude 
the peace which they sought, till he had procured 
the insertion in the treaty of a promise on their 
part to cease offering children to Cronus. 2 Lydi- 
ades 3 at first exercised a tyrannical sway in Mega- 
lopolis ; but during his reign becoming a different 

1 Peisistratus obtained supreme power in Athens no less than 
three times, and always by intrigue and violence. But his ad- 
ministration was wise and beneficent. He enriched Athens with 
several of the most costly and tasteful public edifices. He was a 
liberal patron of letters. He settled the poor of the city in the 
outlying districts of Attica, and laid the foundation for the agri- 
cultural prosperity of the state. 

2 This treaty could have had only a temporary effect ; for at a 
subsequent period we read of two hundred children being burned 
at the shrine of Cronus in Carthage, as a propitiatory sacrifice 
when a successor of Gelon appeared in arms before the city. In 
the Hebrew Scriptures we learn that this particular form of human 
sacrifice was largely practised by the Canaanites, — the stock of 
which the Phoenicians who settled Carthage were an offshoot. 

3 Lydiades rose from an obscure condition to a despotic sov- 
ereignty over Megalopolis, and probably with little scruple as 
to the means of elevation ; but, becoming convinced that it was 
for the interest of the city to join the Achaean league as a free 



16 Plutarch on the 

man, and inspired with hatred for injustice, he re- 
stored laws to the citizens, and then, fighting with 
their enemies, fell gloriously in his country's cause. 
If one had killed Miltiades 1 when he was a tyrant 
in Chersonesus, or had prosecuted and slain Cimon 
when he was living with his sister as his wife, 2 or 
had the people banished Themistocles 3 from the 
city when he went about making riot and doing 
mischief, and showed his insolence in the market- 
state, he abdicated the crown, and was chosen commander of the 
forces of the republic thus constituted. He died in battle. 

1 "We are reminded here of the stanza in Byron's song : — 

" The tyrant of the Chersonese 

Was freedom's best and bravest friend ; 
That tj'rant was Miltiades. 

O that the present hour might send 
Another despot of the kind ! 
Such chains as his were sure to bind." 

2 Elpinice, whose first husband was Cimon, was his father's 
daughter ; but they had different mothers. In the earlier ages, 
for obvious reasons, kindred was reckoned only on the mother's 
side, and the intermarriage of the children of the same father and 
different mothers was legal, and not unusual. We find traces of 
the lawfulness of such marriages in Hebrew history as late as the 
time of David. Cimon's marriage was probably lawful ; but pub- 
lic sentiment had then advanced so far as to render such a union 
discreditable, if not absolutely infamous. It is worthy of remark 
here that the Greek names for brother and sister, ctSeA^os and 
a8e\(pr), in their derivation and original use denote a relation on 
the mother's side alone. 

3 The stories that have come down to us of the riotous lining, 
recklessness, and debauchery of Themistocles as a young man 
almost transcend belief. It is related of him that he was once 
drawn in a carriage through the thronged market-place by four 
shameless women harnessed like horses. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 17 

place, sentencing him to exile as Alcibiades was 
afterward sentenced, would not the Marathons have 
been lost to us ? and the Eurymedons ? and the 
beautiful 

" Euboean headland, 1 where the sons of Athens 
Laid the fair corner-stone of liberty? " 2 

Great natures, indeed, produce nothing small. 
Because of the intensity of their impulses, what is 
strong and efficient in them does not remain idle; 
but they are tossed to and fro as on an ocean be- 
fore attaining to a fixed and established character. 
Therefore, as one unskilled in husbandry, seeing a 
tract of country full of prickly shrubs and weeds, 
abounding in vermin, and having much stagnant 
water and a great deal of mud, would not make 
choice of it, while to one who has learned to dis- 
criminate and judge, these very things indicate 
strength and all other good qualities in the soil, 
and show that it can be ploughed without resist- 
ance, so in like manner there are great natures 
that bring forth many things annoying and blame- 
worthy, the roughness and thorniness of which so 
put us out of patience that we might think it best 
to cut them off and to prevent all further growth ; 

1 ' 'Apre/ito-iov, Artemisium. The first naval battle between the 
Grecian forces and Xerxes was fought off Artemisium. Themis- 
tocles commanded the Athenian portion of the fleet, and the 
splendid victory was ascribed, in great part, to his skill and 
prowess. 

2 From Pindar, — commemorative of this battle. 

2 



18 Plutarch on the 

while the better Judge, discerning from these very 
tokens the excellence and nobleness that lie be- 
neath them, awaits maturity as the coadjutor of 
reason and virtue, and the period when the nature 
once so wild shall yield fruit that is not wild. 

7. Enough has been said on this point. To pass 
to another consideration, do you not think that it 
was wise in some of the Greek states to copy the 
Egyptian law, that a woman with child under sen- 
tence of death shall have her sentence suspended 
till her child is born ? 

We think so, — they all said. 

Then I continued, — If one cannot bear children, 
yet will be able in process of time to bring forth 
into the lio-ht some clandestine transaction or con- 
spiracy, or will disclose some lurking evil, or will 
become the author of some salutary counsel, or 
will invent a supply for some urgent need, is not 
he who awaits the benefit that will accrue from 
delay in punishing such a man wiser than he who 
would put the offender out of the way at once? So 
I think. 

And so do we, said Patrocleas. 

You are right, said I. For consider that, if 
Dionysius * had been punished in the beginning of 

1 Before Dionysius the elder obtained the undisputed sover- 
eignty of Syracuse, Sicily had been devastated by the Carthagin- 
ians, and several of its chief cities destroyed. In the first year of 
his reign, the Carthaginian general, after a successful campaign, 
offered him terms of peace, solely because his own army had 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 19 

his tyrannical reign, none of Greek descent would 
ever have lived again in Sicily after its devastation 
by the Carthaginians. Nor, if Periander 1 had been 
speedily punished, would Greeks have again in- 
habited Apollonia, or Anactorium, or the peninsula 
of the Leucadians. 2 I think, too, that Cassander's 
punishment was delayed, that Thebes might be 
repeopled. 3 The larger part of the strangers that 
had plundered the temple, 4 and afterwards went to 

suffered severely from pestilence. But in subsequent wars 
Dionysius repeatedly defeated the Carthaginians, and, whatever 
his demerits, he raised his kingdom to a high degree of prosperity, 
and rendered it attractive to the emigrants whom the over- 
peopled Greek cities were constantly sending to every region 
where Greek enterprise, genius, and skill could hope for recog- 
nition and reward. 

1 Periander was the tyrant of Corinth in the seventh century 
before Christ. His history is obscure ; but the traditions with 
regard to him relate many acts of violence and cruelty^ and also 
very great misfortunes, and his domestic life was overshadowed 
equally by crime and by misery. The three places named in this 
sentence were early Corinthian colonies, and they may have been 
settled by Periander's enterprise, or may have been places of 
refuge from his caprice and oppression. 

2 The island of Leucadia was a peninsula in Homer's time, 
and was probably still so when the Corinthian colony was 
established . 

3 Alexander destroyed Thebes ; twenty years afterward Cas- 
sander rebuilt it. Plutarch very probably refers to the tradition 
that Cassander poisoned Alexander. Not that he was free from 
other undoubted crimes ; for his whole life was marked by 
sporadic acts of violence. He cannot be said to have received 
any specific punishment ; but he was kept in perpetual harass- 
ment by the quarrels among the successors of Alexander. 

4 That is, this temple of Delphi, the scene of the dialogue. 



20 Plutarch on the 

Sicily with Timoleon, perished wretchedly in their 
guilt, but not till they had conquered the Cartha- 
ginians, and put an end to their oppressive rule. 1 
Indeed, the Deity uses some bad men as public 
executioners to punish others, and then destroys 
the executioners themselves. This, I think, has 
been the case with most tyrants. For as the gall 
of the hyena, and the saliva of the sea-calf, and 
other parts of loathsome beasts, have a certain vir- 
tue in the cure of diseases, so upon some who need 
severe chastisement God inflicts the implacable 
bitterness of a tyrant or the annoying oppression 
of a chieftain, and removes not what pains and 
troubles them till the disease is cured and purged 
away. Such a medicine was Phalaris 2 to the peo- 
ple of Agrigentum, and Marius to the Eomans. 3 
God indeed expressly foretold to the people of 

1 In the Phocian war two Phocian leaders with their associates 
seized the treasure deposited in the temple at Delphi, and used it 
to hire foreign mercenaries. Those concerned in the robbery 
were wandering as outlaws in Peloponnesus, when Timoleon 
enlisted them for service in Sicily against the Carthaginians. 
They contributed largely to his success ; but after their dispersion 
most of them encountered such disasters as were regarded as the 
normal penalty of sacrilege. 

2 So little is really known about Phalaris that he is almost a 
mythical personage. His name, however, will always remain 
associated with his brazen bull, and his trying his first experi- 
ment with it by roasting in it its inventor, who certainly best 
deserved the doom. 

8 The readers of Roman history may doubt the medicinal virtue 
of Marius, who certainly served as a seton on the body politic. 



Belay of the Divine Justice. 21 

Sicyon that they would of necessity be severely 
scourged, for seizing as of their own city Teletias, 
a Cleonaean youth, who had been crowned in the 
Pythian games, and then tearing him in pieces. 1 
Accordingly Orthagoras, and after him Myron and 
Cleisthenes and their satellites, put an end to their 
lawlessness. But the Cleonaeans, not chancing to 
have the same curative treatment, came to naught. 2 
Hear also Homer, when he says, 

" A son endowed with every virtue sprang 
From parentage that gave no sign of virtue." 

This son of Copreus, of whom he thus speaks, 
achieved indeed no splendid or noble deeds ; but 
the posterity of Sisyphus, and that of Autolycus, 
and that of Phlegyas, bloomed forth in the glories 
and virtues that belong to great kings. Pericles 
sprang from an infamous Athenian family, 3 and 
Pompey the Great in Eome was the son of Strabo, 4 

1 History throws no light on this specific crime ; but the 
Sieyonians had the reputation of being a licentious and other- 
wise vicious people. The curative process under Orthagoras and 
the dynasty that he founded lasted a full century. 

2 Of Cleonae we know very little except that it was, and now 
is not. Near its site is a hamlet of half a dozen houses that bears 
the name of Clenes. Nemea, where the Nemean games were held, 
was in its territory. 

3 One of his maternal ancestors had been cursed, and banished 
from Athens, a century and a half before his birth, for an insur- 
rectionary enterprise. 

4 He was killed by lightning, which the people regarded as a 
retributive bolt from heaven. He deserved hatred, Cicero says, 
for his cruelty, treachery, and avarice. 



22 Plutarch on the 

whom the Koman people so hated that they cast 
his dead body out of doors and trod it under foot. 
What wonder is it then, if, as the farmer does not 
cut down the thorn-bush till he has taken from it 
the green shoots which he uses as salad, nor do the 
Libyans burn the cistus till they have collected the 
balsam which it yields, so God does not destroy the 
evil and thorny root of an honorable and royal race 
till the appropriate fruit springs from it ? For it 
was better for the Phocians to have lost ten thou- 
sand of the cattle and horses of Iphitus, and a 
larger amount of gold and silver than was ever 
abstracted from Delphi, than that Odysseus 1 or 
Aesculapius 2 should not have been born, or that 
the world should have failed of the good and emi- 
nently useful men who have been the sons of 
wicked and depraved fathers. 

8. But must we not think it better that punish- 
ments should take place in fitting time and way, than 
that they should be inflicted speedily and promptly ? 
There was a fitness in the case of Callippus, who 
with the very same dagger with which he had pro- 
Cured the death of Dion while feigning to be his 

1 One tradition makes Odysseus the son of Sisyphus, and only 
the step-son of Laertes, who, however, married Anticleia before 
her son was born. Autolycus was the father of Anticleia, and it 
was he that stole the cattle of Iphitus. 

2 Aesculapius in Grecian fable was the son of Apollo by Coro- 
nis, the daughter of Phlegyas, who, in what might seem righteous 
indignation against the wanton god, set fire to his Delphian tem- 
ple, having of course first ravaged it. 



Belay of the Divine Justice. 23 

friend was himself killed by the friends of Dion ; l 
and in that of the murderer of Mitius of Argos, who 
was killed in a riot, and whose brazen statue in the 
market-place fell with fatal issue on the man who 
had killed him. You, Patrocleas, must, I am sure, 
know about Bessus the Paeonian, and Aristo the 
Oetaean, the commander of the foreign soldiers. 

No, by Zeus, said Patrocleas, I do not know, 
but I want to know about them. 

Aristo, 2 said I, by leave of the tyrants, 3 took away 
the ornaments of Eriphyle deposited here, 4 and car- 
ried them as a present to his wife; but his son, 
being for some reason angry with his mother, set 

1 Dion obtained supreme power in Syracuse, though not the 
title of King, on the expulsion of Dionysius the younger. Callip- 
pus, his professed friend, was the leader of the band of malcon- 
tents that killed Dion, although he did not kill him with his own 
hand, perhaps shrinking from the act of murder on account of an 
oath which, when under suspicion, he had sworn at the altar of 
Persephone, that he would remain faithful to his friend. His 
aim was the place which Dion had held. It was his but a little 
while, and then, after a series of misfortunes and wanderings, he 
was killed at Rhegium with the same weapon that had been em- 
ployed in the murder of Dion. 

2 Eriphyle received a golden necklace as a reward for betraying 
her husband Amphiaraus, who secreted himself to avoid going to 
the Theban war in which it was predicted that he should perish. 
His son Alcmaeon avenged his father by killing his mother, and 
then made of the necklace a sacred deposit in the temple at Delphi. 
Aristo was the commander of one of the bands of mercenaries hired 
by the pillage of the temple. 

3 The Phocian lej 

4 In this temple. 



24 Plutarch on the 

the house on fire, and burned all that were in it. 
Bessus, it is said, killed his father, and escaped 
detection for a long time. But at length, going to 
supper among strangers, he shook down a swallow's 
nest with his spear, and killed the young birds ; 
and when those present asked, as was natural, what 
had provoked him to do so strange a thing, he said, 
" Do they not, even of old, bear false witness against 
me, and cry out that I killed my father ? " Those 
who heard him, marvelling at what he said, told 
the king, and, on investigation, Bessus suffered due 
punishment. 

9. What I have said thus far has been said on 
the supposition that, as is generally thought, there 
is an actual delay in the punishment of the wicked. 
But as to what may yet be said on this point, it 
may be well for us to listen to Hesiod, who main- 
tains, not, with Plato, that punishment is a suffer- 
ing that follows wrong-doing, but that it is a twin 
birth with wrong-doing, spriuging from the same 
soil and the same root ; for he says, 

" Bad counsel does most harm to Mm who gives it," 

and, 

" Who does another wrong himself most wrongs." 

The cantharis, 1 by a certain contrast in the elements 
of its physical structure, is said to contain within 
itself the antidote for the wound which it makes. 

1 The Spanish fly, which was used for medicinal purposes in 
very early times, as it is now. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 25 

But — the converse of this — guilt, bringing with 
itself into being its own pain and punishment, not 
subsequently to, but in the very act of wrong-doing 
receives its penalty. The malefactor who is to be 
crucified carries his cross with his own body ; and 
in like manner wickedness creates from itself, to be 
borne by itself, each several form of chastisement, 
being, so to speak, an expert artificer of a wretched 
life, attended by thronging fears and distressing 
emotions, by ceaseless remorse and constant pertur- 
bation. But some persons are like children, who, 
often seeiug in the theatres malefactors in gold- 
embroidered tunics and purple mantles, crowned 
and dancing, admire and applaud them as happy 
beings, until they appear on the stage goaded and 
scourged, and with fire streaming from their gay 
and finely wrought apparel. 1 For many of the 
wicked, surrounded by large families, and possessed 
of places of high command and extended authority, 
are not visibly punished till they are seen slain or 
hurled down a precipice, which ought to be called, 
not punishment, but the end or consummation of 
punishment. As Plato says that Herodicus, the 

1 Such spectacles — never, so far as we know, witnessed in 
Greece — were not uncommon in Rome. Christians were thus 
exhibited and murdered on the stage in the sight of admiring and 
applauding multitudes ; and we have no reason to doubt that 
other reputed malefactors were similarly dealt with. This trea- 
tise may have been written after Plutarch had been in Rome ; 
at any rate, Roman customs were well known throughout the 
empire. 



26 Plutarch on the 

Selymbrian, being attacked with phthisis, an incura- 
ble disease, and being the first to unite gymnastics 
with the healing art, made death long for himself 
and for those similarly affected; so too such of the 
wicked as seem to escape immediate punishment 
receive, not after a long time, but during a long 
time, not a slower, but a longer punishment ; nor 
are they punished when they grow old, but they 
grow old in a state of punishment. Yet it is only 
to you that I speak of a long time ; for to the gods 
any period of human life is as nothing, and " now, 
not thirty years hence," is to them as it would be 
to us for a malefactor to be put to torture or 
hanged this evening, and not to-morrow morning. 
Besides, one is kept in life as in a prison that lias 
no outlet or mode of escape ; yet he may enjoy 
frequent feasts, may transact business, may receive 
presents and kindnesses, like the men who play 
with dice or at draughts in prison, with the rope 
hanging over their heads. 

10. Indeed, why may I not say that those under 
sentence of death are not punished till their heads 
are cut off, — and that he who has been condemned 
to drink hemlock, and then goes about and remains 
unaffected till his legs grow heavy, is not punished 
until he is overpowered by the deadening of the 
muscles and the congealing of the blood, combined 
with the loss of consciousness, — if we confine the 
name of punishment to the last stage of punish- 
ment, and leave out of the account the sufferings, 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 27 

and terrors, and apprehension, and remorse, which in 
the mean while prey upon every guilty soul ? As 
well might we maintain that a fish that has swal- 
lowed the hook is not caught till we see it roasted 
by the cook or cut up on the table. For every 
wrong-doer is in the grasp of justice so soon as he 
has swallowed as a bait the pleasure connected 
with his sin, having a conscience resting heavily 
upon him, and driven hither and thither in the 
endeavor to expiate his guilt, 

"As the impetuous tunny ploughs the sea." 

Up to the time when the crime is committed, the 
well-known assurance and audacity of guilt are 
strong and efficient ; but afterward the excitement 
subsides like a wind that dies away, and the mind, 
enfeebled and dispirited, becomes subject to fears 
and superstitions, — so that Clytemnestra's dream, 
as related by Stesichorus, is in conformity with 
experieuce and truth. The verses are : 

" A dragon seemed to come with blood-smeared head, 
And took the form of King Pleisthenides." * 

Indeed, visions in sleep, noonday apparitions, oracles, 
peals of thunder, and whatever events vww seem to 
take place by the agency of God, are fraught witli 
tempests and terrors for those who are in this con- 

1 Agamemnon, the husband of Clytemnestra, whom she mur- 
dered on his return from Troy, was the son of Pleisthenes. Stesi- 
chorus wrote a tragedy entitled Orestes, from which, undoubtedly, 
these verses are taken. 



28 Plutarch on the 

dition. Thus, it is said that Apollodorus 1 once in 
his sleep saw himself flayed by Scythians, then 
boiled, and his own heart speaking out of the cal- 
dron, and saying, "I have brought all this upon 
thee " ; and again, that he saw his daughters on 
fire, their bodies in flames, running round him in 
a circle. It is said, too, that Hipparchus, 2 the son 
of Peisistratus, shortly before his death, saw Aphro- 
dite sprinkling blood upon his face from a vial. 
The friends of Ptolemy surnamed Ceraunus 3 saw 
him summoned to the tribunal by Seleucus, with 
vultures and wolves for his judges, while he was 
distributing large portions of flesh to his enemies. 
Pausanias, 4 having sent to seize by force Cleonice, 

1 Apollodorus, king of the small state of Cassandreia, was 
regarded as having been unsurpassed in tyranny, cruelty, and de- 
bauchery. The mention of his daughters in this vision makes it 
probable that he was guilty of some horrible outrage of violence 
or lust of which they were the victims. 

2 The crime or type of depravity of which Hipparchus 
guilty can be inferred only from the vision here reported. 

3 Ptolemy Ceraunus was the eldest sun of Ptolemy Boter ; but, 
on account of his violent passions and moral obliquity, his father 
designated a younger son as his successor. Ceraunus then •mi- 
grated to Macedonia, became intimate with Seleucus, murdered 
him treacherously, and himself assumed the sovereignty ; but in 
less than a year he was defeated by the Gauls who then first 
invaded that region, was taken prisoner, and was put to death 
with the utmost barbarity. 

4 Plutarch tells this story with fuller details in his life of 
Cimon. The Pausanias referred to is the Spartan viceroy and 
general of that name. Byzantium, which had been a stronghold 
of the Persians, was held by the Lacedaemonians, under Pausanias, 
at the time of the retreat of the Ten Thousand. 



Belay of the Divine Justice. 29 

a free-born maiden in Byzantium, that he might 
have her company by night, and then, in consequence 
of some unaccountable mental disturbance or sus- 
picion, killing her when she arrived, often saw her 
in his dreams, saying to him, 

" Come quick to judgment ; lust works woe to man." 

The vision not being discontinued, it is said, he 
set sail for the oracle of the dead at Heracleia, and 
there, by fitting propitiatory sacrifices and libations, 
he called up the maiden's soul; 1 and she, coming 
into his presence, told him that he should rest from 
these troubles on his arrival at Lacedaemon. As 
soon as he arrived there, he died. 

11. Thus, if there is nothing for the soul after 
death, that is, if death is the end of all reward and 
punishment, one might be disposed t<> say that the 
Deity deals indulgently and leniently with those of 
the wicked who are soon punished and die early. 
For were it maintained that in their lifetime the 
wicked incur no other evil than the conviction that 
wrong-doing is utterly fruitless and graceless, and 
fur the many and great conflicts of mind that it 
costs confers no benefit nor anything worthy of 

1 The rites differ ; but tli.' 1 ». -1 i • - f in necromancy has undergone 
no essential change from th vitch of Bndor to the 

present time, and th' i bably been in ei - now, 

ceremonies which have brought credulous men and women into 
imagined communion with departed Bpirits. The history of nec- 
romancy .shows many resemblan 
different countrii 1 degrees of culture. 



30 Plutarch on the 

endeavor, the perception of this alone is fatal to the 
soul's happiness. It is with the evil-doer as with 
Lysimachus, 1 who, compelled by thirst to surrender 
his person and his command to the Getae, having 
quenched his thirst and being at the same time 
made a prisoner, exclaimed, " Alas for my guilt in 
suffering myself to be deprived of so great a king- 
dom for so brief a pleasure ! " It is, indeed, in a 
case like this, exceedingly difficult to resist the ne- 
cessity created by a natural appetite. But when a 
man, either from inordinate desire for wealth, or 
from envy of those possessed of civic honor and 
power, or for the sake of some sensual gratification, 
commits an unlawful and abominable deed, and, 
after the thirst and madness of passion have sub- 
sided, sees in due time the vile and fearful traits 
of character which lead to crime established perma- 
nently within him, while he can discern in himself 
nothing useful, or serviceable, or profitable, is it 
not probable that the thought often occurs to him 
that for vainglory or for slavish and fruitless pleas- 
ure, he has set at naught the greatest and best 
things that are accounted right among men, and thus 
whelmed his life in shame and trouble ? For as 
Simonides 2 said in jest that he found the chest of 

1 One of Alexander's generals, and after Alexander's death 
king of Thrace. 

' 2 Simonides is said to have been the first poet who eulogized 
the subjects of his verse from mercenary motives. As his pane- 
gyrics had great poetical merit, and were much sought and well 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 31 

money always full, that of thanks empty, so the 
wicked, having a clear view of their own guilt, find it 
— after the indulgence which yields for the moment 
an empty pleasure — utterly devoid of hope, and 
always laden with fears and griefs, with cheerless 
memories, suspicion of what the future may bring, 
and distrust of the present. Thus, as we hear Ino 
say on the stage, repenting of what she has done, — 

" Dear women, tell me how, as at the first, 
As if this deed of mine were uncommitted, 
The house of Athamas may be my home," l — 

so it is probable that the soul of every evil-doer 
discusses these things within itself, and considers 
how it can by any possibility evade the memory of 
its misdeeds, cast out from itself the consciousness 
of them, and, becoming pure, start as if from the 
beginning on a new life. For wickedness manifests 
neither courage, nor modesty, nor consistency, nor 
steadfastness in the objects of its preference, — un- 
less, by Zeus, we admit that evil-doers are wise ; 

paid for, yet with few expressions of gratitude, he was wont to 
say that his chest of money was full, the chest designed for 
thanks empty. 

1 These verses are probably from a lost tragedy of Euripides. 
The myths about Ino are various, and mutually inconsistent. 
According to some she killed, according to others she endeavored 
to kill, the children of her husband, Athamas, by a former wife. 
Still others charge her with the murder of her own son or sons. 
She at length leaped into the sea, and emerged a goddess, 
under the name of Leucothea, — certainly a better name in 
heaven than she could have borne on earth. 



32 Plutarch on the 

but whore avarice, and eager voluptuousness, and 
implacable envy, are associated with malice and 
depravity, there also, on examination, you may see 
beneath the surface superstition, and effeminate 
indolence, and dread of death, and an abrupt vacil- 
lation of impulses, and an arrogant pretence to 
undeserved honor. Men of this character fear 
those who blame them, and at the same time dread 
those who praise them, as those whom they have 
wronged by their hypocrisy, and as persons espe- 
cially hostile to the wicked, as is evinced in their 
cordial commendation of those who seem to be good. 
Indeed, the hardness in depravity, as in bad iron, 
is brittle, and what seems in it to have the great- 
est power of resistance is easily broken in pieces. 
Hence, in process of time, as bad men come to the 
knowledge of themselves, they are depressed, and 
grow peevish, and hold their own manner of life in 
abhorrence. When a mean man restores a deposit 
intrusted to his care, or gives security for a friend, 
or with honorable ambition confers gifts and ser- 
vices on his country, and immediately repents and 
is in trouble for what he has done, because of the 
utter instability and vacillation of his mind, — and 
when some who are applauded in the theatre for 
their generosity groan as their love of glory is 
merged in their love of money, — can it be that 
those who, like Apollodorus, 1 sacrifice men in the 

3 Apollodorus is said to have bound his associates in some 
movement for his own aggrandizement by bringing them together 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 33 

interest of their tyrannies and conspiracies, or like 
Glaucus, 1 the son of Epicydes, plunder the prop- 
erty of their friends, do not feel remorse, nor hate 
themselves, nor suffer grief, for the crimes that they 
have committed ? I, indeed, if it is not irreverent 
thus to speak, do not think that those who work 
iniquity need any avenger among gods or men ; 
hut their own life suffices for their punishment, 
being utterly corrupted and kept in constant agi- 
tation by their guilt. 

12. Consider now whether our discussion has 
exceeded a reasonable time. 

Timon replied, 2 — Perhaps so, with reference to 
the time that will yet be required ; for I am going to 
bring forward the last doubt as a combatant held in 
reserve, since the others have been fairly conquered. 
What Euripides with the utmost boldness of speech 

at a festival, and at its close giving them evidence that they had 
been feeding on human victims. 

1 Glaucus, a Lacedaemonian, had a high reputation for integ- 
rity, and on the ground of it received from a foreigner a deposit 
of a large sum of money. When the owner's sons claimed the 
deposit, he disclaimed all knowledge of it. But a threat of the 
Delphian oracle led him to make restitution afterward. Nev- 
ertheless the threat took effect, and he and his whole family 
perished. 

2 In this section Timon seems to cite indiscriminately the 
cases of delayed or protracted punishment by men which are 
confessedly foolish or wicked, and alleged instances of delayed 
punishment on the part of the gods. The gravamen of the 
objection is, " How can that be just or right for the gods to 
do, which when men do they encounter either ridicule or 
condemnation ? " 



34 Plutarch on the 

inveighs against the gods for doing, namely, visiting 
the sins of the fathers upon the children, account 
us as tacitly charging upon them. Certainly, if 
those who have done wrong were themselves pun- 
ished, there is no justice in chastising those who 
have done no wrong ; for it is not right to punish 
even the evil-doers in their own person twice for 
the same offence; and if the gods, in their remiss- 
ness failing to punish the guilty, afterward inflict 
penalties on the innocent, they do not fittingly 
make amends for their slow doing by unrighteous 
doing. Take the case of Aesop. 1 It is said that he 
came hither with money furnished by Croesus, in- 
tending to offer a magnificent sacrifice to the god of 
the temple, and to distribute among the citizens of 
Delphi four minas 2 apiece. But, as it is reported, 
having become disaffected toward the people here 

1 That Aesop was killed by the Delphians for the cause here 
stated there seems to be no doubt ; nor yet that Idmon, a de- 
scendant of the man of the same name who -had owned and 
emancipated Aesop, received a large sum of money from the 
Delphians by way of expiation for their crime, to which they 
had probably in the mean time ascribed every bad harvest and 
every epidemic. It must be remembered that, before the rotation 
of crops became the habit of agriculturists, bad harvests were very 
frequent, and that, in the absence of sanitary rules and precau- 
tions, dangerous epidemics prevailed at short intervals in all the 
cities of the old world. It was not unnatural that these calami- 
ties should have been regarded as retributive judgments where a 
gross crime had been committed. 

2 A mina was about the metallic equivalent of twenty dol- 
lars, but of course with a much larger purchasing power. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 35 

on account of some affront or quarrel, he made the 
sacrifice indeed, but sent the rest of the money 
back to Sardis, not thinking the men of Delphi 
worthy of the gift. They then raised against him 
the charge of sacrilege, and put him to death by 
throwing him from yonder cliff, which they call 
Hyampeia. From that time it is said that the god 
was angry with them, and made their soil un- 
fruitful, and sent among them all kinds of strange 
diseases, so that they went round among the public 
assemblies of the Grecian cities, proclaiming with 
earnest entreaty that whoever would demand jus- 
tice of them in behalf of Aesop should receive full 
satisfaction. But not until the third generation 
came Idmon, the Samian. not related to Aesop, 
except as the descendant of those who had bought 
him at Samos, and to him the Delphians made 
satisfaction in the ways prescribed, and were freed 
from their calamities. It was on that account, it 
is said, that the people changed the place of pun- 
ishment for sacrilege from Hyampeia to the cliff 
called Nauplia. Now those who hold the memory 
of Alexander in the fondest regard, of whom I am 
one, do not approve of his sacking the city of Bran- 
chidae, 1 and destroying its inhabitants of all ages, 

1 A small town in Central Asia, built by the Branchidae, who 
were priests and custodians of the temple of Apollo Didymeus in 
an Ionian city bearing their name, near Miletus. The temple was 
burned by Darius, was rebuilt, and was burned again by Xerxes, 
on his retreat from Greece. The priests surrendered the treasures 



30 PI the 

_ rat-grandfathers had I 

ttpk : 1 So Agatho- 

Syi use lerided and teased the 

: when th ^ged 

or fathers 
sho _ in, when the 

Ithaca complained that his soldiers 
stealing their sheep, he replied, u Tour king not 

lid the like, at \ at c at the shephei 
Bat is not Apollo more unreasonable th 

whom I have named, if fa - n ing the 

P- v - : PI '-'■-- I t::e:..:„s. 

ing thei: whole be- 

r Her:".:: is said thoos :: have 

■:r. : .■■-; :\.-i: :"_:.:: I:":.:. :":'.'. ~ '. hiri ::_ 1:= :::_\l: :: ^:i:: 
p ":-". -"..:.: :-7.. ::: = : :::".:•:. "-. ".:. 1 '.:'.. :1_t ::-— ~L::i A.^zizirr 
destroyed. His alleged motive for his cruel treatment of the 
Branchidae was revenge for the sacrilege and treason of their 
ancestors. 

1 Ir was at Scheria, according to Homer, that Odyssen^ was 
kindly received by Nausicaa, entertained sumptuously by King 
Alcinous, her father, and provided with the ship on board of 
which he reached Ithaca. The inhabitants of Corcyra maintained 
that their island was the Homeric Scheria, which very probably 
~ : \ _ :V in 

- I '.- •_ '. - 

- Z':.': - :r:::rr :: PlrZrZ= := =: slniTri -.: :'.: ::i:;ri-: ::' 
two mountain streams as to be of necessity liable to inundation. 
There was an old canal, said to have been constructed by HcT- 
:z.- = . ir. i '. -:_..:! :: ::::" ::: .:_~ >"-:7_:rrziL rz:e?s ::' vrafri : 

: had early become obstructed and useless, and Plin^ 
that there had been no less than five periods when the region 
had been entirely devastated by the overflow of the rivers. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 37 

stolen the oracular tripod and carried it to Pheneus ? 
And was he less unreasonable in announcing to 
the Sybarites that they should see the end of their 
calamities, when by three destructive visitations 
they should have appeased the wrath of the Leuca- 
dian Hera ? l Nor is it so very long a time since 
the Locrians ceased sending virgins to Troy. 

" With naked limbs, bare feet, and servile guise, 
At early dawn they sweep Athene's temple, 
Unveiled, while age remorseless steals upon them." 

And all this because of the licentiousness of Ajax. 2 
Now where is the reasonableness or rightfulness of 

1 There were three occasions on which the Sybarites incurred 
the special anger of Hera. Her statue was overturned in some 
civic commotion. Afterward the people of Sybaris killed thirty 
members of a delegation from their neighbors of Crotona, and 
cast out their bodies to be devoured by wild beasts. On this occa- 
sion, the goddess was seen by night with an angry and threaten- 
ing mien. In the third place, a slave who had taken refuge at 
her altar was pursued and scourged by his master, who held his 
father's tomb as so much more sacred than her temple that he 
ceased beating the slave when he sought refuge there. Sybaris 
is known to have been twice destroyed before Plutarch's time. 
There may have been a third destruction of which we have no 
record ; but there is nothing in the text to forbid our so constru- 
ing it as to leave the threat still hanging over the city, and the 
third destruction still impending. 

2 The tradition was that Ajax was guilty of an outrage on 
Cassandra, the priestess of Athene. He on his return voyage was 
destroyed by shipwreck, and the Locrians were supposed to have 
suffered on account of his crime visitations of pestilence and other 
dire calamities. When they consulted the oracle, the reply was, 
that the guilt of Ajax could be expiated only by their sending 
annually to Troy, for a thousand years, two virgins to perform 



38 Plutarch on the 

these things ? Equally little can we commend the 
Thracians 1 for still tattooing their wives, to avenge 
Orpheus ; or the barbarians about the Po, who 
wear black, as they say, in mourning for Phaethon, 
which seems all the more ridiculous when we con- 
sider that, while those who lived when Phaethon 
perished cared nothing at all about the matter, 
their posterity of the fifth or the tenth generation 
are changing their garments and mourning for him. 2 
Yet this is merely foolish, not atrocious or intolera- 
ble. But on what justifiable ground does the anger 
of the gods, suddenly disappearing, as some rivers 
do, break out again in a different place, on other 
people than the evil-doers, terminating only in ex- 
treme calamity ? 

13. As soon as Timon came to a pause, fearing 
that with a fresh start he might bring forth more 
and greater absurdities, I instantly asked him, — 
Do you really think that all these things are true ? 

If not all, said he, yet if some of them be true, 
do you not think that the discussion labors under 
the same difficulty ? 

menial service iu the temple of Athene. The hero, the crime, 
and the expiation are, more probably than not, all mythical. 

1 The Thracian men were tattooed as well as the women, and 
it was probably for both men and women a preferred mode of 
ornament. 

2 I can find nowhere else any reference to this observance ; but 
nothing is more probable than that Phaethon's name should have 
been attached to some religious anniversary in the region in 
which he was said to have perished. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 39 

Perhaps, said I; and so to persons in a high 
fever, whether they chance to wear one garment, 
or to be wrapped in many, the burning heat is 
nearly or quite the same, and yet it contributes 
to their relief to remove the multitude of coverings. 
But if the patient is unwilling to have this done, 
let him have his own way. Yet most of these 
stories seem like myths and fictions. But recall 
to mind the religious festival lately held here, when 
you saw the magnificent portion of the viands 1 
which the heralds took from the table, proclaiming 
that it was due to the posterity of Pindar, and 
remember how solemn and sweet this token of 
honor seemed to you. 

But, said he, who would not be delighted by the 
gracefulness of a commemoration so entirely Gre- 
cian and so simply archaic ? unless he had, to bor- 
row Pindar's own words, a black heart forged in a 
cold fire. 

There is then no need, said I, of my citing a 
similar proclamation made in Sparta, "After the 
Lesbian singer," 2 in honor and remembrance of the 

1 " Of the viands" is an interpolation of my own. At a feast 
a "portion" was "carried off," and I know not what it could 
have been, if not a part of the food and wine on the table. If 
there were none of Pindar's posterity at hand to receive the por- 
tion, there were undoubtedly hungry officials ready in this be- 
half to represent them. 

2 I suppose that the first place at a Spartan civic festival was 
formally assigned to Terpander, long dead, and that the most dis- 
tinguished living guest was made to regard himself as second in 
honor. 



40 Plutarch on the 

ancient Terpander; for the principle is the same. 
But you, 1 I suppose, think yourselves superior to 
other Boeotians, as being of the race of the Ophel- 
tiadae; 2 you make similar claims among the 
Phocians 3 by virtue of your descent from Daiphan- 
tus; 4 and you, indeed, were the first to stand by 
me and help me in preserving for the Lycormaeans 
and the Satilaeans 5 their hereditary honor, and the 
right to wear crowns in public which belongs to 
the posterity of Hercules, — maintaining that last- 
ing honors and favors are due to those descended 
from Hercules, because he, though a great benefac- 
tor to the Greeks, never received his due of grati- 
tude, or any fitting recompense. 

You remind us, said Timon, of a truly noble con- 
test, and of one in which it was especially becoming 
for a philosopher to take part. 

Ptelax then, my friend, said I, the severity of 
your accusation, and do not take it so hard if some 
of the descendants of wicked and depraved people 

1 "K>eis. Plutarch is here addressing, not Timon alone, but 
two or all three of his interlocutors. 

2 Descendants of Opheltes. He came from Thessaly to Thebes, 
and brought with him a body of armed adherents. He founded a 
royal line in Boeotia. 

3 Delphi being in Phocis, the claims on the score of Daiphantus 
would be availing in all processions and festivities connected with 
the temple service. 

4 A victory that the Phocians under Daiphantus had gained 
five hundred years before was still celebrated in Plutarch's time. 

5 I can find elsewhere no notice of these races, or families. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 41 

are punished ; or else do not welcome or commend 
the honor rendered to worthy parentage. For if we 
would retain the reward of virtue in the posterity 
of the virtuous, we cannot reasonably think that 
punishments for misdoings ought to fail and cease, 
but must suppose that they will run on at even 
pace with the rewards, giving retribution in each 
case in proportion to desert. But he who gladly 
sees the posterity of Cimon honored in Athens, yet 
is vexed and angry at the exile of the descendants 
of Lachares 1 or of Ariston, 2 is very stupid and 
feeble-minded, or rather has the presumption to 
take the place of a wrangler and railer against the 
Divine Being, — accusing him, forsooth, if the chil- 
dren's children of an unrighteous and wicked man 
seem to prosper, and again accusing him if the pos- 
terity of bad ancestors are suffered to decline and 
to become extinct, — indeed, finding equal fault 
with God when the children of a good father or 
those of a bad father fare ill. 

14. Let . these considerations serve you as de- 
fences against those who are so excessively bitter 

1 Lachares was a demagogue who early in the third century 
b. c. obtained virtually supreme power in Athens, plundered the 
Parthenon, stripped the statue of Athene of its ornaments, com- 
mitted numerous acts of high-handed tyranny, and was finally 
expelled from the city on the charge of having taken measures for 
betraying it into the hands of Antiochus. 

2 Ariston was an Epicurean philosopher, who raised himself to 
a virtual tyranny in Athens, but surrendered to Sulla when he 
besieged the city. 



42 Plutarch on the 

and objurgatory. But taking up again the begin- 
ning of the thread in our discussion concerning 
God, — obscure, indeed, and with many turnings and 
windings, — let us direct our way discreetly and 
deliberately toward what is probable and credible. 
For not even in the things which we ourselves do 
can we always state with confidence the actual and 
true meaning. Thus we cannot tell why we order 
the children of those who die of phthisis or of 
dropsy to sit with their feet in water till the corpse 
is buried, though it is believed that in this case 
they neither contract the disease at the time nor 
are liable to it afterward. Nor, again, can we tell 
the reason why, when a goat takes into his mouth 
a piece of snakeroot, 1 the whole flock stand still till 
the goatherd comes and takes it out of his mouth. 
There are properties of various objects that are 
transfused or transmitted in ways incredible as to 
velocity and distance. In these cases we are in- 
deed more surprised at remoteness of time than of 
space. Yet it is really more amazing that Athens 
should have been infected throughout with a pes- 
tilence 2 that began in Aethiopia, and that Pericles 
should have died of it, and Thucydides should have 
been attacked by it, than that, if the Delphians and 
the Sybarites have been wicked, protracted punish- 

1 ^HpvyyiTrjv, eryjigium, now the name of a genus containing 
several species of snakeroot. 

2 The plague that raged in Athens early in the Peloponnesian 
war, of which Thucydides gives so remarkable an account. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 43 

ment should come upon their posterity. For all 
properties of objects have mutual action and re- 
action from their very beginning till now, and bear 
relations to one another of which, though we are 
ignorant of the cause, it none the less produces its 
appropriate effect. 

15. Nevertheless, the public calamities of cities 
have obviously their reason in justice. For a city 
has unity and continuity like a living creature, not 
devesting itself of identity by the changes that 
occur at successive periods of its life, nor becoming 
a different being from its former self by the lapse 
of time, but always retaining a conscious selfhood 
with the peculiarities that belong to it, and receiv- 
ing the entire blame or praise of whatever it does 
or has done in its collective capacity, so long as the 
community which constitutes it and binds it to- 
gether remains a unit. But dividing it by succes- 
sive periods of time so as to make of a single city 
many cities, or rather an infinite number of cities, 
is like making of one man many men, because he 
is now elderly, yet once was younger, and still 
earlier was a mere stripling. This might remind 
one of the Epicharmians, from whom the sophists 
derived the cumulative argument, 1 according to 

1 Plutarch gives an early specimen of this argument in his life 
of Theseus : "The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens 
returned [from Crete] was preserved by the Athenians down even 
to the time of Demetrius Phalereus ; for they took away the old 
planks as they decayed, putting new and stronger timber in 



44 Plutarch on the 

which he who used to be in debt now owes noth- 
ing, having become a different man, and he who 
was yesterday invited to supper to-day comes un- 
invited, being another person. However, different 
periods of life make greater changes in every one 
of us than they ordinarily make in cities. One 
who sees Athens would recognize it thirty years 
afterward; for the present manners, sports, indus- 
tries, likings, and resentments of the people closely 
resemble those of former days. But after a con- 
siderable time, scarce a kinsman or friend would 
recognize a man's countenance and form ; while the 
change of manners readily brought about in a per- 
son by differing fashions of intercourse, employ- 
ment, experience, and legal obligation look strange 
and new even to one who has always known him. 
But yet the man is said to be one and the same 
man from the beginning to the end. The city in like 
manner remaining the same, we regard it as involved 
in the disgrace of its ancestry by the very right by 
which it shares their glory and their power. Else 
we shall throw everything into the river of Hera- 
cleitus, into which, he says, no one can enter twice, 
because changing nature is transposing and altering 
all things. 

16. But if a city is one continuous entity, equally 

their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example 
among the philosophers for the logical question, as to things that 
grow ; one party holding that the ship remained the same, and the 
other contending that it was not the same." 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 45 

so is a race that springs from one original stock 
and carries along with it certain common tenden- 
cies derived from that stock; and that which is 
born is not, like a manufactured article, separated 
from him who produced it ; for it exists from him, 
not merely by him, so that it possesses and bears 
within itself some part of him, which is properly 
the object of chastisement or of commendation. 
Not in mere sport I would say that it was more 
unjust for the Athenians to destroy the brazen 
statue of Cassander, 1 and for the people of Syracuse 
to cast beyond their borders the body of Dionysius, 2 
than for the posterity of those men to suffer punish- 
ment. For there was nothing of the nature of Cas- 
sander in the statue, and the soul of Dionysius had 
already left the corpse ; but in Msaeus, 3 and Apol- 
locrates, 4 and Antipater and Philip, 5 and equally in 

1 Athens had been under the government of men who had 
been virtually Cassander's viceroys. The city after his death 
came under the rule of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and it was prob- 
ably by his order that the statue of Cassander was destroyed. 

2 Dionysius the elder. 

3 Msaeus was the son of Dionysius the elder, and was sover- 
eign of Syracuse for a short time while his brother Dionysius the 
younger was in exile. Aelian names him in a chapter specially 
devoted to eminent (piAoirSrcu, i. e. drunkards. 

4 Apollocrates was the son of Dionysius the younger, and 
grandson of the elder. His father in going into exile left him in 
command of the citadel of Syracuse, which he was soon com- 
pelled to surrender. He holds the third place, as Nisaeus the 
second, in Aelian's list of distinguished drunkards. 

5 These were both sons of Cassander. Philip succeeded his 
father as king of Macedonia, but died almost immediately upon 



46 Plutarch on the 

other sons of wicked parents, there was implanted, 
and remains continuously, the part of their parents 
that had the mastery over their lives, and in the 
children this is not quiescent or inactive, but they 
live by it, and are nourished by it, and order their 
conduct by it, and think as it prompts. Nor is it 
at all marvellous or absurd that, being the children 
of such men, they should possess their qualities. In 
fine, I would say that, as in the healing art, what- 
ever is beneficial is therefore right, and as lie would 
be ridiculous who should think it wrong in a case 
of hip-disease to cauterize the thumb, and when the 
liver is ulcerated to scarify the upper part of the 
abdomen, and when the hoofs of oxen are tender to 
anoint the tips of their horns, 1 equally is he ridic- 
ulous who thinks in the matter of punishment that 
anything else than the cure of wickedness is right, 
and who is vexed when the remedy is applied to 
some parts rather than to others, after the manner 
of those who open a vein to cure ophthalmia. Nor 

his accession to the throne, leaving probably memory of his vices, 
of which Plutarch had knowledge, but no record of which has 
come down to our time. Antipater, his next younger brother, in 
some sort succeeded him, first murdering his mother, who favored 
the claims of her still younger son. He himself was murdered 
before he could obtain undisturbed possession of his kingdom. 

1 These obsolete modes of medical practice can now only pro- 
voke a smile ; but the argument is complete, if we will substi- 
tute for them the treatment cited at the close of the sentence, 
— blood-letting for ophthalmia, which, if not in rule now, was so 
thirty years ago. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 47 

does such a person seem to look beyond the range 
of his bodily senses ; nor does he bear it in mind 
that a teacher in whipping one boy admonishes all, 
and that a general in the capital punishment of one 
out of ten brings all the guilty men under his com- 
mand back to their duty. In truth not only is 
one part of the body cured through another part, 
but there are certain dispositions of mind and con- 
duct, equally those that are evil and those that 
tend to reformation, as to which soul is influenced 
by soul more than body is affected by body. For 
from body to body the same affection and the same 
change seem to be transmitted ; while in the case 
under consideration the soul, through the influ- 
ence of the imagination, becomes worse or better 
in a degree corresponding to the intensity of hope 
or fear. 

17. While I was still speaking, Olympicus in- 
terrupted me, saying, — You seem to have, un- 
derlying this reasoning of yours, an hypothesis of 
prime importance, — the continued existence of the 
soul. 

Yes, said I, inasmuch as you yourselves admit 
it, or rather did admit it ; for the argument from 
the very beginning proceeded from the supposi- 
tion that God deals with men according to their 
merits. 

Olympicus replied, — Do you think that it fol- 
lows from God's dealing with us according to our 
merits, that souls are either absolutely incorruptible, 



48 Plutarch on the 

or destined at least to continue in being for a cer- 
tain period after death ? 1 

I replied, — ETo, my good friend. God, forsooth, 
is so petty and so trifling, 2 that — as if we had 
nothing of the divine in us, nor anything closely 
resembling him, and stable and firm, but were, as 
Homer says, mere leaves, like those that wither and 
perish altogether — he makes such account of us 
as the women do of their gardens of Adonis, 3 which 
they tend and cultivate in earthen pots, — souls 
lasting for a day, blooming in a frail flesh that has 
no strong root of life, then at once extinguished by 
any casualty that may chance to occur. But if you 
choose, making no mention of other gods, look at 
this one of ours here, and say whether you sup- 
pose that he, knowing that the souls of the dying 
are instantly destroyed when they are exhaled from 
their bodies, like clouds or smoke- wreaths, should 
demand so many propitiations for those who die, 
and such tokens of .great reverence and honor for 



1 The reference in this last clause is to the opinion largely- 
held by the Stoics, that the soul is not immortal, but is des- 
tined to survive the body, and to live till the consummation of 
the existing universe, which, after completing a cycle of many 
thousands of years, will be destroyed by fire. 

2 This sentence is, as I believe, ironical. Some editors and 
translators make it interrogative ; but the grammatical construc- 
tion, as it seems to me, is opposed to this view. 

3 This term, as applied to vessels or shallow earth-beds, where 
what is sown can only spring up and wither without coming 
to seed, occurs in Plato's Phaedrus. The very brief life and 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 49 

the dead, thus deceiving and deluding those who 
believe in him. I therefore would not den} the 
continued existence of the soul, unless some one, 
like Hercules, should carry off the tripod of the 
Pythian priestess, and abolish and destroy the ora- 
cle. For while even down to our own time many 
such things are foretold by the oracle as are said 
to have been announced to Corax of Naxos, 1 it is 
unholy to deem the soul capable of dying. 

Then Patrocleas said, — What was that pre- 
diction, and who was that Corax ? Both the story 
and the name are unfamiliar to me. 

By no means, said I; but I was to blame in 
using a by-name instead of the real name. For he 
who killed Archilochus in battle was named Ca- 
londas, as they say, and had Corax for a surname. 
He, having been first driven out of the temple by 
the Pythian priestess because he had killed a man 
sacred to the Muses, then employing prayers and 
entreaties with a statement of the case in his own 

untimely end of Adonis may perhaps account for this peculiar use 
of his name. 

1 Several hundred years ago. Archilochus, the earliest Ionian 
lyric poet, flourished, and was killed in battle, in the seventh 
century b. c. This entire passage may be regarded as an ar- 
gumentum de concessis, and as such it is perfectly legitimate. 
The inspiration of the Delphian oracle and priestess was be- 
lieved in by many of those for whom Plutarch wrote ; and to 
them he said, " Can you believe that all these oracular utter- 
ances about expiations for the dead and posthumous honors to 
be paid to them have had reference to beings that ceased to exist 
when they ceased to breathe ? " 

4 



50 Plutarch on the 

justification, was ordered to go to the resideuce of 
Tettix, 1 in order to propitiate the soul of Archi- 
lochus. This place was Taenarus; 2 for there it is 
said that Tettix the Cretan arrived with a fleet, 
built a city, and established himself hard by the 
oracle of the dead. In like manner, the Spartans 
were ordered by the oracle to propitiate the soul 
of Pausanias, and they sent for necromancers from 
Italy, who by their sacrifices drove the apparition 
of Pausanias from the temple. 3 

18. There is then, said I, one course of reasoning 
which confirms equally the providence of God and 

1 Or, " the home of the grasshopper " ; for tettix (t€tti|) means 
grasshojyjer. The oracle, as usual, was ambiguous. Calondas, 
alias Corax, is represented as not understanding it at first, "but 
finding out afterward that a Cretan named Tettix had settled at 
Taenarus, or Taenarum, he inferred that his home was designated 
by the oracle. 

2 This place was on the southernmost cape of Greece, now 
Cape Matapan. The peninsula which forms this cape had a 
famous temple of Poseidon, was sacred to the infernal gods, and 
was the site of an avenue, through a cave, to and from the in- 
fernal regions, — the avenue by which Hercules dragged Cerberus 
to the light of day. 

3 Pausanias, the Spartan, after a career of mingled glory and 
shame, being detected in treasonable intrigues, took refuge in the 
temple of Athene. When he was nearly exhausted by hunger 
the Ephori dragged him out of the temple, and he died at its 
threshold. For their sacrilege the Delphian oracle ordered that 
he should be re-interred on the spot where he died, and that two 
brazen statues should be erected in honor of the goddess in her 
temple at the public charge. Very naturally, his ghost was sup- 
posed to haunt the sacred enclosure whence he had been taken 
to die. See p. 28, n. 4. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 51 

the continued life of the human soul, and neither 
can remain credible if the other is taken away. 
But to the soul existing after death there is a 
stronger probability that rewards and punishments 
are rendered, than there is that they should be fully 
rendered in this life. 1 For during this life the 
soul is, like an athlete, in perpetual conflict ; but 
when the conflict is over, then what the soul has 
deserved is allotted to it. Yet whatever favors or 
whatever chastisements the soul, being there by 
itself, receives, are of no concern to us living here, 
nay, they are disbelieved and they are out of the 
field of our knowledge; but these penalties that 
pass on through children and remoter posterity, 
being manifest to men living here, check and re- 
strain many of the wicked. There is, indeed, no 
punishment more shameful or more sorrowful than 
for men to see their posterity suffering on their 
account. Were the soul of an impious and lawless 
man to behold after death, not his statues over- 
thrown, or any honors that he had received can- 
celled, but his children, or friends, or kindred, or 
family, suffering great misfortunes and receiving 
punishment on his account, such a soul would not 
choose again to be depraved and profligate, — no, 
not even to obtain honors like those w T hich belong 

1 The clause, " than there is that they should he fully rendered 
in this life," has nothing in the original to correspond to it ; but 
it is necessary in order to convey the obvious meaning of the 
sentence. 



52 Plutarch on the 

to Zeus. To show this I have a story to tell, which 
I lately heard ; but I hesitate, lest you may think 
it a myth, while I want to confine myself to what 
is reasonable. 

Do not hesitate by any means, said Olympicus, 
but tell the story. 

The others made the same request. 

Then, said I, permit me to finish my reasoning, 
and afterward we will take up the myth, if indeed 
it be a myth. 

19. Bion 1 says that God in punishing the chil- 
dren of the wicked is more ridiculous than a physi- 
cian who should administer medicine to a grandson 
or a son for his grandfather's or his father's illness. 
But the two things are in some respects unlike, 
though in others alike and similar. It is true, in- 
deed, that one person's being medically treated does 
not remove another's illness, nor is one who is suf- 
fering from ophthalmia or from fever relieved by 
seeing another person anointed or plastered; but 
the punishments of the wicked are inflicted in the 
sight of all, because it is the office of justice rea- 
sonably administered to restrain some by means 
of the penalties endured by others. But the point 

1 Probably, as it seems to me, not Bion the poet, but a philoso- 
pher of that name, — a man of infamous character, an atheist in 
his professed belief, and remarkable for pithy and epigrammatic 
sayings, full of bitter humor and biting sarcasm, some of which 
are still extant. Horace speaks of those who find pleasure in 
Bioneis sermonibus et sale nigro. 



Belay of the Divine Justice. 53 

in which Bion's comparison really applies to the 
subject under discussion escaped his discernment. 
When a man seized with a stubborn, but not neces- 
sarily incurable illness, yields up his body to the 
disease by intemperance and effeminacy, and dies 
in consequence, if his son, though not seeming to 
be ill, yet barely has a tendency to the same disease, 
his physician, or kinsman, or apothecary, or judi- 
cious master, putting him upon a rigid diet, taking 
from him stimulants, delicacies, strong drinks, and 
opportunities for sensual indulgence, employing 
medicaments continually, and disciplining his body 
by gymnastic exercises, excludes and expels the 
disease, not suffering the minute seed of a grievous 
bodily affection to grow into an appreciable magni- 
tude. Do we not thus give our advice, thinking 
it fitting for the children of diseased fathers and 
mothers to take care of themselves, to be on their 
guard, and not to lose thought of their inherited 
hability to disease, but promptly taking the inborn 
malady in hand, to expel it at the beginning, while 
it is easily removed and has no fixed seat ? 

This is perfectly true, they say. 

You grant then, I continue, that we do, not what 
is absurd, but what is necessary, — not what is 
ridiculous, but what is beneficial, — when we pre- 
scribe gymnastic exercises, diet, and medicine for the 
children of epileptics, or of hypochondriacs, or of 
sufferers from the gout, not because they are ill, but 
to prevent them from being ill. For a body born 



54 Plutarch on the 

of a diseased body is deserving, not indeed of pun- 
ishment, but of medical treatment and of vigilance, 
which if any one sees fit to call the punishment of 
timidity and feebleness, his opinion is of no account. 
If then it is worth our while to cherish and to pre- 
serve the body bom of a diseased body, ought we 
to permit the congenital likeness of wickedness to 
spring up and come to growth in a young character, 
and to wait till, having its issue in vicious passions, 
it becomes openly manifest, and, as Pindar says, 
displays the malignant fruit of the inmost soul ? 

20. In this matter God in his wisdom does not 
even transcend the sentiment expressed by Hesiod, 1 

" From suppers of the gods the marriage-bed 
Approach, and not from rites funereal," 

implying that not only wickedness or virtue, but 
sadness, and happiness, and all other properties 
whatsoever, are transmitted from parents, so that 
those who would be responsible for bringing chil- 
dren into the world should be cheerful, and sweet- 
tempered, and genial. However, it is not the result 
of Hesiod's maxim nor the work of human wisdom, 
but of God, to discern and discriminate likenesses 

1 Or, " Is not God wiser than Hesiod ? " With this interroga- 
tive construction, which the sentence will bear, the sense is, — 
"Hesiod teaches the hereditary transmission of character as a 
fact ; God, still more, traces these inherited traits before they ap- 
pear to human view." According to the rendering that I have 
given, the sense is, — " The transmission of character from father 
to son is recognized not only by God in his providence, but equally 
by wise men, as, for instance, .by Hesiod." 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 55 

and differences, before they become conspicuous by 
men's falling through the force of passion into great 
transgressions. The young of bears and wolves and 
monkeys, indeed, show at once their inborn dis- 
position, without cover or concealment. But a 
man's nature, conforming to customs, opinions, and 
laws, conceals what in it is evil, and often imitates 
the good, in such a way as either altogether to wipe 
off and get rid of the native plague-spot of wicked- 
ness, or else to keep it long concealed, craftily veil- 
ing itself and escaping our notice, so that we are 
scarcely aware of his depravity when assailed as 
with a blow or sting by successive instances of 
his wrong-doing, — imagining, as is our wont, that 
men become wholly unrighteous when they first 
perform an unrighteous act, or licentious when they 
first gratify lust unlawfully, or cowards when they 
first flee from danger, — a simplicity that may be 
compared to one's thinking that the stings of scor- 
pions grow when they first use them, or that the 
poison is generated in vipers at the moment when 
they bite. No bad man becomes and first appears 
bad at the same time ; but one has the evil in him 
from the beginning, and puts it into practice, avail- 
ing himself of opportunity and ability, the thief in 
stealing, the tyrant in exercising despotic rule. 
But God is not ignorant of any man's disposition 
and nature, inasmuch as he discerns the soul even 
more than the body; nor does he wait to punish 
till violence has been committed by the hands, 



56 Plutarch on the 

effrontery uttered by the voice, or lasciviousness 
actualized in fleshly deed. For he does not avenge 
himself on the wrong-doer as himself suffering wrong, 
nor is he angry with the robber as having been him- 
self robbed, nor does he hate the adulterer as injured 
in his own honor ; but he often punishes beforehand 
the adulterers, and the avaricious, and the unright- 
eous, to cure them, thus removing guilt, as physi- 
cians attempt to cure epilepsy, before the fit seizes 
the patient. 

21. We were scandalized a little while ago be- 
cause the punishment of the wicked is late and 
slow; yet now we equally call the Divine Provi- 
dence in question, because for some it checks the 
vicious temperament and disposition before they 
become guilty ; leaving it out of mind that the po- 
tential evil might be worse and more fearful than 
the crimes that are actually committed, and that 
which is concealed, than that which is in open 
view ; and unable to comprehend the reasons why 
it is better to suffer some to do wrong, and to 
forestall others who are also evilly disposed, — 
just as medicines are unsuitable for some sick 
persons, while they are beneficial to some even who 
are not ill, yet in a more perilous condition than 
those who are. ISTor do the gods visit all the trans- 
gressions of the fathers on the children ; but if a 
good man is the son of a bad man, as one in sound 
health may be the son of an invalid, he is released 
from the penalty due to his race, as one taken by 



Belay of the Divine Justice. 57 

adoption out of a guilty family. But for a youth 
who becomes, conformed to the likeness of a de- 
praved race, it is certainly fitting that he should 
receive the punishment of guilt as a due heritage. 
On the other hand, Antigonus was not punished for 
the sins of Demetrius, 1 nor, to cite other cases of 
bad men, was Phyleus made to pay the penalty for 
Augeas, 2 nor Nestor for Neleus; 3 for they, though 
the children of bad men, were good men. But as 
for those whose nature loves and cherishes the 
inborn evil, justice has its course, pursuing with 
penalty the sinful likeness that is in them. More- 

1 Demetrius Poliorcetes, king of Macedonia, who was guilty of 
great crimes, and in a not over- virtuous age was distinguished 
for unbounded licentiousness. He died in captivity, having 
surrendered to Seleucus, king of Syria, after expulsion from his 
own kingdom and a series of consequent disasters. Antigonus, 
his son, was & man of eminent virtue, had a diversified, but on 
the whole a prosperous career, and died at the age of eighty, 
after a reign of nearly half a century. 

2 Augeas, having made a contract with Hercules by which a 
tenth part of his cattle were to be the price for cleansing his 
stables in a day, refused to pay the price ; and Hercules waged 
with him a war in which he and all his sons but Phyleus per- 
ished. Hercules placed Phyleus on his father's throne, as king 
of the Epeians in Elis. The father's story is, of course, myth- 
ical, and the son hardly falls within the domain of authentic 
history. 

3 The chief offence charged in Grecian myth against Neleus 
was his refusing to perform expiatory rites for Hercules after he 
had killed Iphitus, whose father was the friend of Neleus. Her- 
cules, accerding to some traditions, made war on Pylos, the king- 
dom of Neleus, and killed him, with all his sons except Nestor. 



58 Plutarch on the 

over, as the warts and birth-stains and freckles of 
fathers, not appearing in their own children, crop 
out again in the children of their sons and daugh- 
ters ; as a certain Greek woman, giving birth to a 
black child, when accused of adultery, discovered 
that she was descended in the fourth generation 
from an Aethiopian; as among the children of 
Pytho the Nisibian, said to belong to the Sparti, 1 
the one who died lately bore the impress of a spear 
on his body, — a race-mark after so many ages rising 
and emerging as from the depths of the sea, — so 
not infrequently earlier generations conceal and 
merge ancestral habits and dispositions, while after- 
ward and through later generations the inherited 
nature comes to flower, and reproduces the family 
tendency to vice or to virtue. 2 

1 Sparti, from <rirelpa>, the sown men, i. e. the armed men that 
sprang from the teeth of the dragon sown by Cadmus, from 
whom the oldest families in Thebes — a large part of the Boeotian 
aristocracy — were said to have descended. Something like this 
mythical birthmark had probably made its appearance on the body 
of a member of one of these ancient families. Nisibis was a 
Syrian city with an extensive commerce, with many Greek, and 
probably some Boeotian immigrants. 

2 It may be that, in cases where the inheritance of a morbid 
physical constitution, or of proclivity to moral evil, seems to lapse 
in the first generation and to reappear in the second, the children 
of the diseased or depraved father have the physical or moral 
traits of their father, but are made and kept vigilant and 
faithful in self-care and self-discipline by the memory of their 
father's infirmities or sins ; while their children have the inher- 
itance without the warning. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 59 

22. After saying these tilings, I was silent. But 
Olympicus, smiling, said, — We are not ready to 
express our parting commendation of your rea- 
soning, lest we may seem fully satisfied with 
your arguments, and lose the story. When we 
have heard that, we will pronounce our final sen- 
tence. 

Then I spoke as follows : 1 — The Solian, 2 Thes- 
pesius, an associate and friend of that Protogenes 
who was here with us, 3 having led a very dissipated 
life in his youth, and in a short time squandering 
his property, for a while on account of his impov- 
erished condition became desperately wicked, and, 
repenting of his wastefulness, sought in evil ways 
to become rich again, like those profligates who, 
when they have wives, do not keep them, but after 
divorcing them endeavor to corrupt them when 
they are married to other men. Abstaining from 
nothing vile that promised pleasure or profit, he got 
together in a short time a property by no means 
large, and the most ample reputation for depravity. 
But he was most widely known in connection with 
a certain response that was brought from the oracle 

1 If Plutarch, made this story, as he probably did, it was un- 
doubtedly suggested by the story, unlike in its details, yet with 
not dissimilar purpose, which. Plato tells of Er, the Pamphilian, 
in the tenth book of The Republic. 

2 Soli was a considerable city in Cilicia. 

3 Me0' rifjuxs, after us, is the reading in all the manuscripts 
and older editions ; fied' r]/j.a>u, with us, is a conjectural emenda- 
tion which the sense seems to require. 



60 Plutarch on the 

of Amphilochus. 1 He sent thither, it is said, to ask 
the god whether he should be better off 2 for the 
rest of his life. The reply was that he would do 
better after he died. And this event in some sort 
happened to him not long afterward. Falling from 
a precipice and striking his neck on the ground, 
receiving no wound, but only a shock, he became as 
one dead, and the third day had already arrived for 
his funeral. But then, being suddenly aroused from 
his swoon and returning to himself, he made an 
incredible change in his manner of life ; for the 
Cilicians know of no other person in his time more 
honest than he in keeping his engagements, more 
religiously devout, more resolutely hostile to his 
enemies, 3 or more loyal to his friends, so that those 
about him wanted to know the cause of the change, 

1 Amphilochus was one of the heroes of the Trojan war. He 
was the son of a seer, and was believed to he endowed with the 
gift of prophecy. The oracle bearing his name ;it Hallos in 
Cilicia was said to have been founded by him, and it had a 
wider and more enduring reputation fur veracity than any other 
ancient oracle. 

2 Ei PeATtov fSiuarfTai. The question related to his property, 
— to his means of comfortable living. I therefore use in trans- 
lating it the familiar colloquialism, better off. The answer has a 
moral significance. BeA-nov is an ambiguous word, — applicable 
equally to condition and to character. 

8 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy," 
was sound ethical doctrine, equally with Gentile and with Jew, 
until men saw in the divine humanity of Jesus Christ the 
qualities of character which had been most despised, transfigured 
and trlorified. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 61 

thinking that such a revolution in one's habits 
could not have taken place by chance. And they 
were right, as he told his story to Protogenes and 
to other equally intimate friends. When his body 
became unconscious, the feeling at first was such as 
a pilot would have if he were hurled from his ship 
into the sea. Then, being somewhat recovered, he 
seemed to breathe with entire freedom, and to look 
round in every direction, as if his soul had been 
a single open eye. He saw nothing that he had 
ever seen before; but he beheld immensely large 
stars, at vast distances from one another, emitting 
a lustre marvellous in tint, and shooting forth 
rays, on which the soul was borne on the light 
as in a chariot, in perfect quietness, easily and 
swiftly. 

But — omitting the greater part of what he saw 
— he said that the souls of the dying rose from 
beneath like fiery bubbles through the parted air. 
Then, the bubbles gradually bursting, they came 
forth, having a human form, but of diminutive size. 
But they did not move alike; for some sprang 
forth with wonderful agility, and mounted straight 
upward, while others, whirling round in a circle 
like spindles, tending now downward and then 
again upward, were borne with a complicated and 
confused movement that could hardly be arrested 
even in a very long time. He did not, indeed, 
know who many of these souls were ; but seeing 
two or three whom he recognized, he tried to join 



62 * Plutarch on the 

them and talk with them. They, however, neither 
heard him, nor were in possession of their right 
mind ; but, demented and shy, shrinking from sight 
and touch, they at first flitted round by themselves ; 
then, meeting many souls in the same condition and 
mingling with them, they moved in all directions 
without aim or purpose, and gave utterance to inar- 
ticulate sounds like battle-cries mingled with strains 
of lamentation and terror. Others from above, in 
the zenith of the circumambient heavens, appeared 
refulgent, and often approached one another in a 
kindly way, yet avoiding those troubled souls ; and 
they seemed to signify annoyance by shrinking 
within themselves, and pleasure and approval by 
the expansion and enlargement of the forms in 
which they moved. 

Among these he said that he saw the soul of 
a kinsman of his, yet at first was not sure of 
his identity, as he himself was but a boy when 
this man died; but the soul, drawing near him, 
said, "Hail, Thespesius." When he marvelled 
at this, and replied that his name was not Thes- 
pesius, but Aridaeus, the soul said, "It was Ari- 
daeus, but from henceforth it is Thespesius ; 1 
for you are not yet dead ; but by a certain allot- 
ment of the gods you come hither with your per- 
ceptive faculties, while you have left the rest of 
your soul, like an anchor, in your body. Let it 
be a token of this to you, both now and hereafter, 

1 Thespesius means divine. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 63 

that the souls of the dead neither cast a shadow 
nor wink." 1 

Thespesius on hearing this became more self- 
collected in mind, and, taking a closer look, he saw 
that there moved along with him a certain dim 
and shadowy line, while those about him were sur- 
rounded with light, and transparent within. How- 
ever, they were not all equally so. Some, indeed, 
like the clearest full moon, emitted continuously a 
uniform and unflickering light; but of the others, 
some had their bodies streaked with what looked 
like scales and. flabby scourge-marks; some were 
very much discolored, and disgusting to the sight, 
like snakes branded all over with black spots ; and 
others, still, had slight scars. The kinsman of Thes- 
pesius (for there is nothing to forbid one's giving 
human titles to disembodied souls), explaining these 
appearances one by one, told him that Adrasteia, 
daughter of Necessity 2 and Zeus, holds the highest 
place of all, ordaining punishment for wrong-doings 
of every kind, and that of the guilty there was 
never either great or small that could escape her, 
whether by craft or by force. But a different mode 
of punishment is assigned to each of the three 
custodians and executive ministers that have the 



1 Plutarch (Greek Questions, 39) writes : "The Pythagoreans 
say that the souls of the dead neither give a shadow nor wink." 

2 'hvayKT). This mythical parentage may account for the name 
of Adrasteia, which is probably derived from SiSpdo-Keiv, to escape, 
with the a privative, and thus means uncscapable. 



64 Phitarch on the 

guilty in charge. The first of these, swift Poena, 1 
takes in hand those who are punished at once while 
in the body and by means of their bodies, yet in a 
somewhat mild way, and passing over many things 
that need cleansing. Those the cure of whose 
guilt is a heavier task the Deity gives over after 
death to Dice. 2 But as for those whom she rejects 
as utterly incurable, Erinnys, 3 the third and sternest 
of Adrasteia's subordinate ministers, chasing them 
as they wander and flee in different directions, re- 
moves them all from sight in misery and wretched- 
ness, and plunges them into a destiny too horrible 
to be told or seen. Of the other chastisements, he 
compared that of Poena in the earthly life to cer- 
tain modes of punishment practise! by barbarians. 
For as among the Persians they strip off and beat 
the clothes and the turbans of those that are pun- 
ished, 4 while the culprits beg with tears that the 

i pu 

2 Justice. 

3 One of the Erinnyos, or Furies. There are dim-rent myths 
as to their number, though there were commonly said to be three. 
Their name i> probably derived from ipivvtiv, t<> be in a rage. 
They were in Grecian fable the type "i' implacable anger and un- 
relenting vengeam ,•. 

4 Plutarch in his . ; ?, says of Artaxerxes Longima- 
nus, who was not an unwise, but an over-indulgent king: "He 
first ordained as a punishment for his nobles who had offended, 
that they should be stripped ami their garments scourged ii 

of their bodies ; and whereas their hair should have been plucked 
out, that the same should be done to their turbans." We do not 
learn that his example was followed by any of his successors, or 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 65 

scourge may be laid aside, — so punishment by loss 
of wealth or by bodily suffering has not an intensely 
penetrating power, nor does it lay hold on the guilt 
in its own interior seat, but is inflicted generally 
for appearance's sake, and to make an impression 
on the bodily senses. 1 But him who comes hither 
from these punishments uncorrected and uncleansed 
Dice takes in hand, open and naked as he is in 
soul, having nothing whereby to conceal or hide or 
cover his depravity, but beheld in every direction 
and by all and in his entire selfhood, and shows 
him first to his good parents, if good they are, as 
being despicable to his progenitors and unworthy 
of them. If they too are bad, he, seeing them pun- 
ished, and being seen by them, is released only 
after having long expiated every one of his crimes 
by pains and sufferings which in magnitude and 
<\ those which come through the body 
alone, as much as reality is more substantial than 
a dream. But the scars and scourge-marks after 
punishment remain in some more conspicuous ; in 
others, less so. " See," said he, " those motley col- 
ors of every kind in the souls, — that dark and 
squalid dye, the pigment of meanness and avarice, 
— that blood-red and liny hue, of cruelty ami bit- 
terness; where there is a bluish tint, intemperate 

that In- employed this method us to criminals in general. But 
the illustration is a happy one. 

1 In these forms of punishment, it is the soul's clothes, i. e. 
the body, not the soul itself, that is punished. 

5 



CG Plutarch on the 

indulgence in sensual pleasure 1. hardly 

been rubbed off; while • that is 

united with envy that viol 1 and 

ulcerous cuttle-fish emits his ink. 

I as en the earth the - of the 

Qtrols 
the b 

. 
cleansing and 

: 
I 

tain i 

| 

slight 

.11. at 
; but 

1 
■ 

.'. Having in I 

■ 
1 1 



Delay of the Divi J dice. 67 

When the friend of Thespesius had thus sj )ken, 
i him rapidly to a certain place that app I 
immense, toward which he moved directly and 
easily, transported on light-beams as uii wings, — 
until, coming to a large and deep cavern, he was 
by the force that had borne him, and he 
saw other souls thi condition. Clustering 

round the chasm in 
Le, but did not <\d\< Within, it 

; ■ bus, J like them diver- 

sified with bough and livii n, and 

Jialed a Soft and 
mild I wafting up odors of wonderful a 

i lucing ai lilar to that which 

wine has on those who drink it freely. The 
souls filled with the* I perfumes were dis- 

I in mirth, and ke] ' 
and jollity and laughter, and sport 

U around 
i ■ i J 

up to th 
by th ind that th I 

1 n 

.I tin' 

; 
l 
I 



68 Plutarch on the 

Lethe. 1 He did not suffer Thespesius to remain 
there, though he wanted to stay, hut took him 
away hy force, teaching him at the same time, 
and telling him how the mind is melted and 
soaked by sensual pleasure, while the unreasoning 
and body-like part of the soul, being thus nourished 
and made fleshly, calls up the remembrance of the 
body, and from that remembrance wakes a desire 
and longing that draw it toward another birth, or 
genesis, 2 which is so called as being an inclination 
toward the earth in the soul that is thus weighed 
down and water-logged. Then, passing in another 
direction by as long a route as that previously 
traversed, Thespesius seemed to see from afar a vast 
basin, and rivers pouring into it, one whiter than 
the sea-foam or snow, another purple like that 
which Iris paints on the rainbow, others still with 
various tints, which, as beheld from a distance, had 
each its own peculiar lustre. But when he drew 
near, the circumambient air being more rarefied and 
the colors fading, the basin Lost all of its surpassing 
beauty except its whiteness, lie then saw three 
daemons sitting together in a triangle, mixing the 
rivers with one another in certain proportions. 

The spirit-guide of Thespesius told him, that Or- 
pheus advanced thus far when he was seeking his 

1 Obi 

2 reveais. According to this derivation yevwris comes from 
77}, the earth, and vtvuv. to incline toward, — a fanciful deriva- 
tion, the genuineness of which there is good reason to doubt. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 69 

wife's soul, and, failing in memory, carried back 
to men a false report that there was in Delphi an 
oracle that was the common property of Apollo and 
Night, while in fact Night has nothing in common 
with Apollo. " But the oracle here," said the spirit, 
" is common to Night and the Moon, having no 
earthly limits, but wandering everywhere among 
men in visions and spectres. From this are dis- 
persed dreams, mingled, as you see, blending the 
simple and the true with the false and the gro- 
tesque. But you do not see," said he, " the oracle 
of Apollo, nor can you see it ; for the earthly part of 
your soul cannot release or loose itself for an up- 
ward flight, but tends downward as not yet wholly 
undetached from the body." At the same time, his 
guide, leading him on, attempted to show him the 
tripod, shining upon Parnassus through the bosom 
of Themis; 1 yet, though he wanted to see it, he 
could get no distinct view of it because of its in- 
tense brilliancy. But, in passing, he heard the 
shrill voice of a woman, uttering in rhythm among 
other things what sounded to him like the predic- 
tion of the time of his own death. The spirit 
said that it was the voice of a Sibyl, 2 who, borne 

1 Themis preceded Apollo as tin' inspirer of the Delphian 
oracle. 

- The Minimis imagined, as we easily may, something like the 
outlines of a human face in the disk <>i" tin- moon, and among their 
myths, <>r rather poetical fancies, was this of a Sibyl revolving 
with the moon, and singing, as she rides across the firmament, 
the fate of men and nations. 



70 Plutarch on the 

round on the face of the moon, sang of things to 
come. Then he, while he wished to hear more, 
was forcibly driven, as on successive eddies, in a 
direction opposite to that in which the moon was 
rushing on her course. But among the predictions 
which he caught in passing was one about Vesu- 
vius, 1 and about the destruction of Dicaearchia 2 
by fire, and also a scrap of verse about the then 
reigning Emperor, 3 — 

"Good though he be, disease shall soon dethrone him." 

After this, they turned to the inspection of those 
undergoing punishment, and indeed from the very 
outset they had only mournful and pitiable spec- 
tacles. Thespesius, without expecting it, happened 
among; friends and kinsmen and associates under 
punishment, who in horrible suffering, and under 
penalties equally shameful and painful, addressed 
to him their lamentations and wailings. 

At length his eyes fell on his own father, coming 
up from an abyss, covered with scars and scourge- 
marks, stretching out his hands to him, and not 
permitted to keep silence, but forced by those pre- 
siding over his punishment to confess his blood- 
guiltiness in the case of certain guests of his who 
had money, and whom he had killed by poison. 
There, on earth, he had concealed the deed from 

1 The great eruption of A. D. 79. 

2 The earlier name of Puteoli. 

8 Vespasian, who died in a. d. 79. 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 71 

all ; but being here convicted, he was now endur- 
ing such sufferings as his son saw, and they were 
leading him where he would suffer still more. 
From amazement and dread, Thespesius dared not 
offer supplication or intercession for his father ; and 
desiring to return and flee, he no longer saw his 
gentle and familiar guide. But, forced forward by 
certain fearful-looking beings, as if it were neces- 
sary for him to advance, he saw that the shades 
of those who had been openly wicked or who had 
been punished in this world were not so severely 
dealt with as others, nor in the same way, having 
been made aimlessly and slavishly vicious by the 
unreasoning and passion-driven element of the soul ; 
while as for such as had lived all their days in 
secret vice, disguised under the pretence and repu- 
tation of virtue, others standing round them, as min- 
isters of justice, compelled them with toil and pain 
to make the soul's interior outermost, which they 
did, wriggling and twisting themselves in unnatu- 
ral ways, as the sea-polyps, when they have swal- 
lowed the hook, turn themselves inside out. Some 
of them the tormentors flayed, and then laid them 
open, showing them inwardly ulcerated and scarred 
with the depravity in their minds and in the govern- 
ing principles of their lives. Thespesius said that he 
saw other souls interwreathed like vipers, two, three, 
or more together, and devouring one another from 
remembered enmity and ill will for what they had 
suffered or done in life. 



72 Plutarch on the 

There were also lakes lying side by side, one 
of boiling gold, one of lead intensely cold, another 
of rough iron ; and certain daemons, like metal- 
workers, with their instruments took up and thrust 
in the souls of those who had been guilty through 
greed and cupidity. When in the gold they had 
become fiery and transparent by burning, these 
daemons plunged them into the lake of lead ; and 
when they had there become frozen like hail, they 
were transferred to the lake of iron. There they 
were made horribly black, and were so fractured 
and bruised by the hardness of the iron, as to look 
like different beings: and then in this deformed 
condition they were carried again to the lake of 
gold, enduring intense torment in these successive 
transportations. V>\\{ those suffered most horribly 
of all who thought that they had been at length 
sed from the hand- of justice, yet who were 
again apprehended for fresh punishment. These 
were they the punishment of whose guilt passed on 
to some <>f their children or descendants. When 
one of these comes and meets them, he falls upon 
them with anger, and cries out against them, show- 
ing the tokens of his sufferings, reviling and pur- 
suing the souls that long to escape and hide, yet 
are unable so to do; for the ministers of justice run 
after them to subject them to fresh chastisement, 
and push them on, while they from the beginning 
lament bitterly, well knowing the punishment that 
awaits them. He said too that some, indeed many, 



Delay of the Divine Justice. 73 

of the souls of the descendants of bad men clustered 
together, sustained in this posture like bees or bats, 
and venting in shrieks their indignation at the re- 
membrance of what they had suffered on account 
of their parents or ancestors. 

Last of all, lie saw the souls destined to a sec- 
ond birth, by main force, bent and transformed 
into all sorts of beasts by artificers who fashioned 
them by appropriate tools and by blows as upon an 
anvil, compressing all their parts, reversing some, 
planing down some, and utterly destroying some, 
so as to fit them for habits and modes of life other 
than human. Among these appeared the soul of 
Nero, having already endured other torments, and 
now pierced with red-hot nails. The artificers had 
taken this soul in hand, and given it the form of 
Pindar's viper, 1 a form in which the creature after 
being conceived eats its way to life through its 
mother's bowels ; when, as Thespesius said, a light 
suddenly shone forth, and from the light came a 
voice commanding that he should be transformed 
into another more gentle brute, — one of those 
croaking creatures that burrow about swamps and 
ponds; 2 for though he had been punished for his 

1 Fero's matricide is here referred to. Plutarch, no doubt, had 
in his mind some then well-known figure or description in a poem 
of Pindar now lost. 

2 Some interpreters suppose that this creature is a swan. I 
have no doubt that it is a frog. Even had not the empire passed 
entirely out of the possible reach of the Caesars, I do not believe 



74 Plutarch on the Delay of the Divine Justice. 

wrong-doings, yet something of mercy was due to 
him from the gods, because he had emancipated 
the Greeks, 1 of all his subjects the best race and 
dearest to the gods. 

Thus far Thespesius saw ; but when he was about 
to return to the earth, he was in utter desperation 
through terror. For a certain woman, of marvellous 
form and stature, laying hold of him, said, " Come 
hither, that you may remember these things the 
better," and she was about to strike him with a 
red-hot wand such as the encaustic painters use, 
when another woman prevented her. Then he, as 
if suddenly forced through a tube by an intensely 
strong and powerful wind, alighted on his own 
body, and awoke hard by his own tomb. 

that Plutarch would have shown any tenderness to Nero's mem- 
ory, and certainly there was no conceivable motive for it under 
the reign of Titus or Domitian. There is a fine satire in this final 
destiny of Nero. He has been horribly punished, and has been 
tortured into the likeness of the reptile regarded by the ancients 
as the only matricide in their zoology ; and now for the one good 
act of his reign a little mercy is shown him. He had prided him- 
self and annoyed his subjects as a singer, and now he is trans- 
formed into the singer that is a perpetual annoyance to all dwellers 
near swamps and ponds. 

1 He freed the province of Achaia from taxes, and endowed it 
with certain political rights and privileges. Vespasian restored 
the province to its previous condition. 



INDEX. 



Adrasteia, presiding over the punishment of disembodied 

souls, 63. 
Aesculapius, sprung from a vicious stock, 22. 
Aesop, murder of, 34. 
Ajax, crime of, 37 n. 
Alexander, revenge of, on the Branchidae for the guilt of their 

• ancestors, 35. 
Amphilochus, oracle of, 60 n. 
Apollodorus, the prey of terrific visions, 28. 

serving a cannibal feast to his associates in crime, 32. 
Archytas, forbearance of, 12. 
Aristo, punished for sacrilege, 23. 
Aristocrates, treachery of, 4. 
Artaxerxes Longimanus, penal discipline of, 64 n. 

Bessus, the parricide, betraying his crime from remorse, 24. 
Bion, the philosopher, cavils of, at the reality of inherited punish- 
ment, 52. 
character of, 52 n. 
Brasidas, death of, 2. 

Callippus, killed by the dagger with which he had procured 

Dion's death, 22. 
Calondas, expiating the slaughter of Archilochus, 49. 
Cassander, not punished till he had restored Thebes, 7. 
Character, hereditary, 44. 



76 Index. 

Children, inheriting the rewards and punishments due to their 

fathers, 39. 
Cimon, infamy and fame of, 16. 

Dionysius, left unpunished for the good that he might do, 18. 

Forbearance, the Divine, affording space for repentance, 13. 

Gelon, reformation of, 14. 

Glaucus, fraud and punishment of, 32. 

God, in his slowness to punish, an example to man, 11. 

Hereditary transmission of punishment no more mysterious 

than transitions in space, 42. 
Heritage of moral qualities lapsing in the first, and reappearing 

in some subsequent generation, 58. 
Hieron, reformation of, 11. 
Hipparchus, punishment of, anticipated in vision, 28. 

IMMORTALITY, made probable by God's retributive providence, 48. 

Laws, human, often unintelligible, 9. 

Lethe, cavern of, 67. 

Lyciscus, treachery of, 5. 

Lydiades, a tyrant, and afterward a patriot, 15. 

MlLTIADES, a tyrant, yet a patriot, 16. 
Mitius, the murderer of, punished, 23. 
Municipal life and character, continuous, 43. 

Nero, doom of, 73. 

Odysseus, redeemed by his own virtues from the curse resting on 
his father, 22. 

Pausanias, haunted by the apparition of a victim of his lust and 
cruelty, 29. 
haunting the temple near which he died, 50. 



Index. 77 

Peisistratus, a usurper, yet a beneficent ruler, 15. 

Periander, punishment of, deferred that he might first render 

service, 17. 
Pericles, of an accursed and infamous race, 28. 
Plato, quoted as making God an example to man, 10. 

forbearance of, 12. 
Plutarch, birthplace and residence of, vii. 

education of, viii. 

family of, ix. 

philosophy of, x. 

theology of, xi. 

ethics of, xii. 

relation of, to Christianity, xiv. 

" Lives " of, xvii. 

" Moralia" of, xx. 

letter of, to his wife on the death of their child, xxii. 

" Apophthegms " of, xxv. 

treatise of, on the Delay of the Divine Justice, xxvi. 
Pompey the Great, son of a worthless father, 21. 
Providence, the Divine, beyond man's full comprehension, 8. 
Ptolemy Ceraunus, punishment of, foretold in dreams, 28. 
Punishment, alleged to be not recognized as such, when de- 
layed, 6. 
for the children of bad men, preceding and prevent- 
ing guilt, 55. 

Sibyl in the moon, predictions of, 69. 

Sicyon, the people of, punished for wantonness and cruelty, 21. 

Slowness of retribution, alleged to be disheartening to those who 

suffer wrong, 3. 
Souls cast no shadow, 63. 
Sybaris destroyed for the guilt of its inhabitants, 37. 

Themistocles, early profligacy and subsequent public services 

of, 16. 
Thespesius, story of, 59. 
Transformation of men into beasts, 71. 



78 Index. 

Wicked men, preserved for services that they may render, 18. 

employed by God as executioners before their own 

destruction, 20. 
punished not late, bul long, 24. 
punished most severely of all in their children, 51. 



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